


Bite the Lightning

by delires



Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02, Digimon Adventure tri.
Genre: Love Triangles, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-24 01:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14945348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delires/pseuds/delires
Summary: The day that Taichi comes out to them is the coldest day on record.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically a few slices of headcanon that got totally out of hand. :/ I almost did not post it. But I am already nearly finished with the last chapter...so what the hell. It's obviously not going away.
> 
> Koushiro-centric, but please know going into this that I am a diehard TaiYama shipper. Consider youselves warned. 
> 
> Title from The Arctic Monkeys.

_April_

When someone comes up behind Koushiro and yanks his bag off his shoulder, it’s not really a surprise. 

He’s standing in the courtyard outside the gym, waiting for Taichi to finish soccer practice, and he can predict exactly how it’s going to go. He knows the insults already – all stuff about him being too smart, too short, too queer. These guys are nothing if not predictable.

This time, it’s Akihito from his social studies class, a rat-faced kid with an overbite, who manages to stop getting bullied himself only by picking on other people.

Koushiro holds one hand out for his bag. “Give it back,” he says, calm as he can. 

Akihito grins at him. “What’s the matter? It got your tampons in it?”

“No.”

“It got your gay porn in it?”

“Look,” Koushiro says, “Nobody’s watching. You don’t have to act like a jerk just for my benefit.”

But, apparently, Akihito disagrees with that. He holds the bag out by its strap. “Oh, you want it? Here you go.”

It’s all too obvious what is going to happen. Koushiro considers not playing along, but the bag is full of unpublished pages for next week’s edition of the school paper and, as the editor in chief, it wouldn’t look good if he lost them. He reaches for the bag, trying not to look too shocked when it is jerked away from him at the last second.

Akihito laughs and holds the bag out once more. Koushiro thinks they are going to have to repeat the whole cycle again, but then someone shouts “hey!” from the other side of the courtyard and they both turn to see Yamato walking towards them. 

Koushiro takes advantage of the momentary distraction to snatch his bag back. Akihito grabs after it on impulse, but then Yamato is standing right next to them and fixing him with one of his icy stares. 

“Fuck off,” Yamato says.

Akihito’s not about to risk a real face-off with Ishida Yamato who, after Taichi, is pretty much the most popular kid in the whole school. But he musters the courage to mutter the word “Fag,” as he turns to go.

“Ooh,” Yamato says, with such cold disdain that Akihito actually blushes as he slinks away, ashamed to have delivered such an unimaginative insult. 

“Thanks,” Koushiro says, hefting his bag more comfortably onto his shoulder. 

Yamato doesn't even look at him. He just shrugs and says, “Whatever.”

They stand there in silence for a moment, both stewing, staring at the door to the gym. 

Of all the chosen children, Yamato has always been the most elusive, the one Koushiro positively can’t make sense of. But in this one way they are the same: turning events over and over, looking at them from every angle and fretting out the conclusions. The difference is that while Koushiro’s conclusions are always empirical, Yamato’s are usually driven by emotion, which makes them thoroughly unreliable as far as Koushiro’s concerned. 

Honestly, these days Koushiro barely sees him. They are both in the same French club at school, but they don’t really talk there. Yamato is only doing it for the extra credits and mostly just sits there looking bored out of his mind, seeing as he’s semi-fluent anyway. 

Koushiro glances sideways at him. He’s an older version of what he’s always been: aloof and willowy, exuding the kind of glamour you can only be born with. 

“Doesn't it bother you when people call you that?” Koushiro asks, without thinking. 

Yamato looks at him. “Call me what?”

Koushiro doesn't answer that, and Yamato looks away again. “It’d bother me more if it were true.”

It’s true for me, Koushiro thinks. One day he’ll open his mouth and say that. But not to Yamato and definitely not now.

There’s a burst of noise as the gym door opens and the first members of the soccer team come out, changed and fresh from the shower. Taichi is there a moment later, walking towards them, bag slung across his body and his sunshine grin plastered across his face.

“Hey,” Taichi says, looking at Yamato. “What are you doing? I thought you had practice?”

“I’m blowing it off.”

“What for?”

“For you, doofus.”

Taichi puts his head on one side and frowns at that, so Yamato sighs and says, “You know, all those messages you keep sending me? ‘I never see you anymore’, ‘When are we going to hang out,’, ‘Why are you ignoring me’. All that shit.”

“I do not sound like that.”

“Practically.”

Taichi drops his hand onto Koushiro’s shoulder, acknowledging him with the touch. “Well, I made plans with Koushiro now. He’s nice and dependable. Doesn't let me down like you do.”

“Oh, come on,” Yamato says, and then: “Okay, I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment.”

Other guys are heading past them, carrying boot bags, one lugging a huge net full of soccer balls. Taichi grins at a couple of them, but he doesn’t move his hand from Koushiro’s shoulder.

Perhaps it’s the warmth of the early spring sunshine, or the fact that Yamato saw off Akihito, but for some reason Koushiro opens his mouth and makes a suggestion, even though he knows that it’s not what any of them wants.

“We can hang out all three of us.”

Taichi’s fingers tighten around his shoulder in a way that might be good or might be bad. It’s hard to tell because Taichi is outwardly so cool about everything. He smiles easily and says, “Awesome. Let's do that.”

But Yamato takes a beat too long to agree with him and this is exactly the kind of thing that makes Koushiro half-hate him sometimes. 

They go to a Saizeriya down the street, partly because Taichi wants to eat, but mostly because Yamato never seems to actually want to do stuff. Usually, when Taichi and Koushiro hang out by themselves, they’ll go to the arcade or play video games at somebody’s apartment. Yamato likes to talk face to face, or not bother at all. Koushiro always thinks an activity is best, but Yamato has more clout than him, so Yamato gets his way.

The waitress seats them in a booth by a window and slides plastic-covered menus in front of them. Koushiro opens his and scans the pictures of pasta and pizza. 

“I can’t even remember what’s good here,” Yamato says, flicking his hair out of his eyes as he tracks the path of a passing waitress who’s carrying a tray high on one shoulder.

“It’s all good,” Taichi tosses his menu aside. “It’s basically just carbs and sauce. You can’t go wrong.”

When the waitress returns,Taichi and Yamato both order spaghetti with squid, but Taichi gets the red sauce, Yamato the black.

“You’re such a wannabe goth,” Taichi says, as he takes Yamato’s menu from him and hands it back to the waitress, along with his own.

“I wish I was as cool as a goth,” Yamato says, with a smirk.

“Is your friend Swedish?” the waitress asks Koushiro as she reaches to collect his menu too. She nods in Yamato’s direction, as though he can’t understand a word and she hasn’t just heard him speaking the language like a local. 

“Nope,” Taichi says, before Koushiro can answer. “He’s Japanese. We don’t know why he looks like this either.”

She hugs the menus to her chest. “Really?” 

“Actually his mom’s French and his dad’s half American,” Koushiro says, looking up at her.

“Wow! That’s amazing!”

“You don’t have to explain that to her,” Yamato says to Koushiro, and then adds, in French, “It’s none of her business.”

The waitress laughs uncertainly, sensing his tone, even in the foreign language. “I’ll get your order in right away,” she says, before turning on her heel and walking away.

“I’m sorry,” Koushiro starts, “I didn’t mean to—“

“Forget it,” Yamato cuts him off. “It just gets old. I know I look like a tourist. People don’t have to point it out.” He glances at Taichi, who is busy staring at him. “What?”

“You’re sexy when you speak like that,” Taichi says, with a grin. “All French.”

Yamato shakes his head. “You’re a moron.”

Koushiro can’t tell whether Taichi is teasing or being serious. Most likely, he thinks, it is a mixture of both. 

One thing he knows for sure is that Taichi has never called him ‘sexy’, not even when he’s been sitting right next to him, conjugating French verbs out loud.

*

_January_

The day that Taichi comes out to them is the coldest day on record. Coldest for Tokyo in the month of January, that is. Not the coldest anywhere, not by a long shot. 

Snow falls heavily all through the night, and by morning the streets are white and empty. Schools are closed across the city. There is every reason to stay indoors, but when Taichi’s message comes through, calling them all together, of course they struggle out anyway.

“I feel stupid now, because this isn’t even important,” Taichi tells Koushiro, as he opens his apartment door and ushers him into the warmth. “Not digital important, anyway.”

Koushiro stamps the snow from his boots and bends down to pull them off. 

“Importance is subjective,” he says.

They all pack into the Yagamis’ living room and then Taichi does it. He just tells them: he’s gay.

“Sorry for making this seem like a fucking press conference,” he says. “I just didn’t want any of you to hear it from someone else. When the snow came, it seemed like the perfect chance.”

Sora is the first to step forwards. She puts her arms around him and says, “We’re proud of you. Thank you for telling us.” 

The rest of them follow. They hug him, pat him on the back, anything to show that it’s okay, that nothing has changed. 

Koushiro is sure that he is blushing as he gives Taichi what must be the most awkward hug in the history of their friendship. They try to put their arms in the same place, and have to readjust, with their faces way too close together.

“That took guts,” Koushiro mumbles, hoping that at least some of his admiration trickles through. Taichi has just stood there in the middle of a room full of people and demoed how to face Koushiro’s biggest fear.

“I guess I have those,” Taichi says with a shrug.

Through it all, the only person to hang back is Yamato. He stays where he is, leaning casually against a doorframe with his arms folded and legs crossed at the ankle. 

Koushiro is taken aback by his lack of reaction, feels kind of mad about it, thinks about saying something on Taichi’s behalf. But Sora beats him to it. 

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asks, staring at Yamato, who shifts against the wall, in no hurry to reply.

“He already knows,” Taichi says quickly. “I told him a couple of weeks ago.”

“Yeah, this is such old news. I don’t even know why I’m here,” Yamato says, in that tone of his that makes it hard to tell if he’s being sarcastic or not.

“It’s called ‘moral support’ bro,” Taichi says, copying the tone.

“Excuse me, do you know how cold it is outside?”

“Extra moral support, then. Heroic levels of support.”

“Well, you’ve got that from me.” Yamato turns his head to stare out the window, voice dropping into sincerity as he does so. “Always, Tai. You know you have.” 

“And I appreciate it,” Taichi says, still looking at Yamato, even though he’s not looking back.

*

_April_

As usual, Taichi devours his food at lightning speed and then sits watching everyone else eat, like a family dog hoping for scraps. He keeps up a steady flow of conversation though, which Koushiro is grateful for. It means that he doesn’t have to worry about awkward silences. And without Taichi’s chat, there would be plenty of those. Yamato is trying to quit smoking, and mealtimes bring on his worst cravings. The longer they sit there, the more irritable and fidgety he becomes.

“How’s it going?” Taichi asks, watching Yamato push the last of his black spaghetti around his plate.

“Bad. It’s going bad, okay? I would stab you in the face right now for a cigarette.”

Yamato’s foot is tapping repeatedly against the base of their table. Koushiro can feel the vibrations travelling across the tabletop.

Taichi nods, mulling this over. Then he says, “If you do it, I’ll take you to DisneySea.”

“I don't want to go to DisneySea, Tai. I want to smoke.”

“Okay: sexual favours? No? I’m thinking no, right?”

“No.”

“Can I finish your pasta?”

“Yes.”

Koushiro wipes his mouth with a napkin and sets his chopsticks neatly down beside his empty plate. 

“You know, there have been studies suggesting that nicotine actually has the potential to slow cognitive decline,” he says. “Not if you smoke it as a cigarette, because there are so many other harmful chemicals in there, but there’s some evidence that, on its own, nicotine can actually prevent Alzheimer’s.” 

He looks at the other two expectantly. They stare back, Taichi blinking, while Yamato rests his chin in one hand, wearing the same expression he wears during French club.

“Cool,” Taichi says, eventually. “Shall we get the check?”

*

As they are walking out of the restaurant and down the street, it is becoming increasingly clear that Koushiro’s idea that they all hang out together was not one of his best. 

There’s something about Taichi and Yamato together that makes them hard to be around. Their interactions create a kind of vacuum. They are their own black hole, filled with unknowable and unreachable matter. 

Koushiro has never felt so distinctly like a third wheel.

They walk, weaving in and out of the bikes and pedestrians, Koushiro lagging a step behind, listening in like an eavesdropper.

“Sometimes I get really tired of this city,” Yamato says, as he and Taichi step apart to let yet another jogger pass between them.

“You love Tokyo,” Taichi says.

“Doesn't mean I can't be tired of it too. I mean, honestly, these crowds? Don’t you just feel like you could snap and start shoving people?” Yamato looks over his shoulder at Koushiro, for objective validation.

“Not really,” Koushiro says, with a shrug.

“Yeah. But we’re civilised people,” Taichi says. “The trick is to make it accidental. Like...”

And before either of them can stop him, he has darted forwards, barging between a couple of tourists, checking them both hard with his shoulder. They don’t even have time to react with anger before Taichi immediately falls over himself apologising in broken, heavily-accented English.

“Sorry, sorry, prease forgive me,” he says, bowing low. 

The tourists scowl at him and murmur in a language that sounds like Dutch, but head off with their guidebooks without any trouble. Behind their backs, Yamato grabs Taichi by the elbow. “What are you doing? You speak perfectly good English.”

“They don’t know that. And now I feel better.” Taichi tugs his arm free and throws it around Yamato’s shoulders. “And so do you.”

Koushiro stands there in the middle of the street, wondering if either of them would notice if he simply wandered off. Yamato looks up at the sky, pretending not to be interested in the arm wrapped around him. Or maybe not pretending, Koushiro reminds himself. Probably genuinely not interested.

“I might if it wasn’t also freezing,” Yamato says, staring at the clouds that have rolled in, turning the spring air chilly.

“You’ve always got to find something to complain about, haven’t you? Here, you want this?” Taichi grabs the hem of his sweater and makes to pull it up over his head. Yamato shrugs free of his arm.

“Don’t do that.” 

“What?”

“Treat me like a girl.”

“Hey,” Koushiro, says, because he can see where this is going.

“Oh my God, forget it, then,” Taichi snaps. He starts walking again, leaving the others to fall in step. “Seriously, Yamato. Fuck you sometimes.”

“Fuck you too.”

“Where are you going to go instead, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Instead of Tokyo? If you hate it so much.”

“I don’t know. Bali? Or something.”

“Bali? That’s bullshit.”

“What’s wrong with Bali?”

“You can’t stand the heat.”

“Koji says it’s interesting.” 

“What the hell would Koji know?

“Okay,” Koushiro says, finally, stepping between them “This is…”

But as soon as the bad blood has bubbled up, it clears again, disappearing into nothing.

“Ooh, takoyaki,” Taichi says, brightening instantly, his eyes fixed on a food stall across the street. He heads right for it, while Yamato is looking in the opposite direction, staring at a group of college kids crowded outside a coffee shop. 

“Smokers,” Yamato says, beginning to drift towards them. “Maybe I can bum one.”

Koushiro hesitates, looking back and forth between them. Then, he chases after Taichi, who is already digging notes out of his pocket to pay the stall owner.

“Are you guys okay?” Koushiro asks. He shakes his head when Taichi offers him a ball of takoyaki from the little cardboard tray. 

“Of course we are. What are you talking about?” 

Taichi pops a piece of the fried dough into his mouth, without even a glance in the direction of the coffee shop, where Yamato is cupping his hand around the wrist of some older guy, to keep the flame of a match steady while he gets his cigarette lit.

*

_February_

After Taichi comes out, it doesn’t take long for the rumours about them to start.

Taichi doesn’t hold the same kind of ‘press conference’ for the rest of the school, but he isn’t the type to hide anything either. If someone asks him straight, he just tells them. He’s popular enough that it doesn’t seem to matter. He is still the captain of the school’s champion soccer team, after all, and still friends with all the other most popular kids in school, including Yamato – with his cruel right hook and pending record deal. 

Despite not actually being together like that, he and Yamato are quite the power couple, something right out of a teen movie. That kind of status brings a hell of a lot of protection. 

It doesn’t stop the gossip, though. And there is certainly plenty of that. 

“I heard they’ve been fucking since tenth grade, but Yamato won’t admit it because of what the record label will think,” Koushiro hears some girl saying behind him in the lunch line one day.

“No, that’s not right,” her friend says, sliding her tray forwards to the drinks fridge. “They were together but Taichi ended it because Yamato slept with someone else. Michiko told me the whole story. And that’s not all. Apparently, it was Akiyama-sensei.”

“The music teacher? That’s no way true,” says the first girl. “Why would they even still be friends if Yamato cheated on him with a teacher?” 

“Duh. Because he’s still in love with him?”

“Actually,” Koushiro says, turning around to face them as the cafeteria worker is ladelling miso into a bowl for him. “They’re not together at all. They never have been. And Yamato’s straight.”

Both girls stare at him. He thinks they might be friends of Mimi’s. Or, at least, they have the glossy hair and manicured nails to give a good impression of being part of her ever-expanding clique.

The first girl looks Koushiro up and down in a way that makes it very clear that she is not impressed by what she sees. “What would you know about it?”

“No, I think he’s really friends with them or something,” her friend tells her, barely looking Koushiro in the face. “God knows how.”

This is the kind of stuff they all have to put up with – overhearing rumours, setting them straight. Yamato gets it the worst, because he’s directly involved, but it seems to roll off of him pretty easily. Maybe because the rumours about him and the string of girls he sees are far louder, and actually grounded in fact.

Koushiro, on the other hand, finds it all particularly hard to stomach.

Ever since Taichi’s revelation about his sexuality, Koushiro’s been analysing his interactions with other men in a way that borders on obsessive. He tells himself this is because Taichi is the only other person in his life who he knows for a fact is gay. Therefore, he is Koushiro’s only model and only test subject. Everything he can learn right now about this lifestyle, he has to learn from Taichi.

As for what those interactions look like, they have been relatively unchanged. True, he flirts with guys more openly, but it’s usually done for effect, to make Jyou blush or Sora laugh, and — at least when it happens within Koushiro’s earshot — it almost always sounds empty. 

But Yamato is the tricky one. When Taichi flirts with him, it doesn’t feel quite the same. Koushiro has yet to determine whether this is significant. 

*

_April_

The peace created by the takoyaki and the cigarette is short-lived. Only minutes later, the heavens open, drenching the streets and sending people running for cover.

Yamato’s apartment is closest, so they make their way there, arriving just as the sun is beginning to break back through the clouds.

“Rainbow.” Taichi leans over the railing of the walkway outside the apartment and points up at a faint arc in the sky. 

Koushiro steps up beside him to look, while Yamato is busy rummaging for his keys. “Did you know that, theoretically, all rainbows are circles?” he says.

Taichi folds his arms on top of the railing and looks at him with interest, squinting one eye against a flash of sunlight. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes. But you can’t see the other half of the circle, because it’s always beneath the horizon.”

“Huh.” Taichi looks back at the rainbow. Looks again at Koushiro. “You know, you could probably tell me anything and I’d believe it, even if it wasn’t true. I trust you way too much. Wouldn’t even notice the difference.”

“Hey, are you coming or what?” Yamato says. He’s standing in his doorway, propping open the door with one foot.

Inside, the apartment is dark because the curtains are still drawn. Yamato goes around opening them, letting in the last of the afternoon light, as Taichi and Koushiro are stepping out of their shoes in the entranceway. The whole place smells faintly of cigarette smoke and aftershave. 

“Sorry about the mess,” Yamato says, clearly for Koushiro’s benefit, because Taichi quickly makes himself at home, pushing aside a pile of junk mail on the low table to find the remote control for the TV.

Koushiro puts his bag down on top of his shoes and steps into the apartment. It must be years since he was last here. It’s smaller than he remembers. He heads over to where Taichi is sprawled on the tatami, flicking through the channels, and sits down next to him. 

In the kitchen, Yamato is opening and closing cupboard doors. “Do you want to eat something?” he calls.

“What do you have?” Taichi yells back.

Yamato puts his head round the kitchen door. “I don’t know. Whatever.”

Taichi thinks for a moment and then says, “Omelette?”

“Okay. Koushiro?”

“No, thank you,” Koushiro says.

Yamato shrugs and disappears again.

“You should have an omelette, dude,” Taichi says. “He doesn’t mind making them.”

“We just had pasta.”

“So? Their portions are tiny. Anyway, I’ve got to keep my protein up.”

Taichi finds a soccer match and turns the volume up. They sit and watch that until Yamato appears and glares at the TV. 

“No,” he says, and that’s all it takes to make Taichi flick the channel to something else, some talk show.

Yamato hands Taichi a plate and a pair of chopsticks, and then drags a cushion over and joins them on the floor.

“I don’t know how Ayumi can wear something that isane on national TV and then not expect people to rip her to shreds on social media,” Yamato says, frowning at the outfit of the woman being interviewed by the host of the show. Koushiro doesn’t know who she is – a singer, maybe? – but Taichi murmurs in agreement.

“She likes the attention though,” he says, through a mouthful of ketchup and egg. “Doesn’t care if it’s negative.”

“Why wouldn’t you care?”

Taichi laughs and raises his eyebrows. “Oh please. Like you don’t dress for attention.”

“I dress to look good, not for attention,” Yamato says, brushing at the knee of his school trousers. “That’s different.”

“Hardly.”

“It’s different. Koushiro?”

“That’s debatable,” Koushiro says, after a moment’s honest consideration. “I would argue that dressing to appear attractive to others is in itself a form of seeking positive reinforcement and therefore pursuing the necessary levels of attention required to demonstrate such reinforcement.”

“See?” Taichi says. “Attention seeking.”

Yamato drops backwards so that he’s leaning on his elbows, half sprawled on the floor. “Oh, kill me.”

Taichi swallows a mouthful of omelette, and then makes a show of running his eyes all the way up Yamato’s body, from legs to face.

“Come on, Yama,” he says. “You know there’s no point you dressing however you dress. People will always pay you attention anyway. Maybe Ayumi can’t say the same. You should cut her some slack, man.”

Yamato’s still and silent for a moment, staring at the TV screen. Koushiro predicts it is the calm before another fight, but then Yamato turns to Taichi and says, “Do you need more ketchup?”

Taichi nods, chewing again. “Yeah.”

Yamato fetches the ketchup and a tray of iced tea, and they sit there watching TV as the afternoon drags on and then turns into evening.

Outside, the sky grows dark. Yamato goes around closing the curtains he so recently opened.

Koushiro doesn’t know where Mr Ishida is. There’s no mention of him and no sign that he will be home any time soon.

The chat show is long over and Taichi is now slumped on his stomach, remote in hand, flicking through the digital TV guide at warp speed.

“So much shit on,” he says.

Koushiro thinks this is a good enough reason to actually do something, rather than just sit there having meandering conversations, but before he can make the suggestion, Yamato gets up and starts digging through a bag in the corner. It’s the kind of neat, leather affair that salarymen carry, probably his dad’s. He comes up with an open packet of cigarettes and heads for the balcony doors.

“That’s not very good quitting,” Taichi calls.

Yamato unlatches the door and shoves back the glass panel, letting in a gust of fresh, damp air. Koushiro finds himself watching with fascination as Yamato puts a cigarette between his lips and then flicks his thumb against a cheap, convenience-store lighter. He leans sideways to do this outside, while still keeping his sock-covered feet indoors. It should be an awkward series of movements, but somehow he makes them graceful. 

“Hey, do you want to watch _Princess Mononoke_?” Taichi says suddenly. “It’s starting in, like, three minutes.”

Yamato puts his head back through the door, one hand dangling outside, holding the lit cigarette. “Are you kidding?”

“No, I haven’t seen it for years. Let’s watch it.” Taichi sits up straighter. “Don’t you remember watching it when we were kids?”

“Wouldn’t you rather watch…” Yamato pauses to take a drag on his cigarette and blow the smoke up into the sky.

“What?”

“I don’t know. Something for adults.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Taichi says.

“I love _Princess Mononoke_ ,” Koushiro says, partly because it’s true and partly to see the look of delight that Taichi turns on him.

“That’s it, then. We’re watching it.” Taichi flicks the channel and then settles back as the opening credits start to roll.

Yamato stays by the window until he’s done smoking, then comes to sit back down. He takes his phone out of his pocket and taps around on it, but Koushiro notices that he gets very still whenever anything exciting is happening, and the phone screen turns black completely during the battle scenes.

“Mononoke reminds me of you, you know,” Taichi says, about halfway through the movie. Koushiro looks over at him, but he is of course staring at Yamato, who looks affronted. 

“Because of the wolf thing?”

“No! Because she’s so mean and angry. And violent. But you root for her anyway.”

Yamato grunts at that. Then, after a pause, he mutters, “She always was my favourite.”

Koushiro stares at the television, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. When he was younger, he always identified with Mononoke himself. She was the weird, adopted kid. The outsider. The one who thinks in a different way to everybody else. But looking at her now, sitting astride a huge white wolf, with her blue eyes and lip-curls of disdain, the match to Yamato is clearly better.

“The actor has your name,” Koushiro hears himself say, on autopilot.

Taichi looks over at him. “What’s that?” 

“The voice actor who plays Mononoke. Her name is Ishida Yuriko. It’s nearly the same.”

“Nice,” Taichi says. “Destiny.”

Yamato doesn’t say anything. He’s too busy looking at his phone.

*

_March_

It takes way too long for Koushiro to realise how much trouble he’s really in when it comes to Taichi.

It’s a Saturday. Hanami. Mimi and Hikari organise a picnic in the park to say goodbye to Jyou, who is going away to college. The girls pick a pretty spot, where the cherry blossom hangs heavy as clouds. They spread down a huge blanket and lay out boxes upon boxes of food. It would be perfect, if not for the hundreds of people coming to view the blossom, taking selfies right in front of them. One guy sets up a tripod practically on top of their blanket, so he can get the perfect shot.

All the crowds and commotion means the party wraps up earlier than expected and, by the time that Taichi has to leave to make it to a soccer match he’s playing in, everyone else is ready to leave too.

“Do you want to come to the game?” Taichi asks Yamato, as they are walking away from the park. He has his kit bag slung over his shoulder and his hoodie unzipped in the spring sunshine.

Yamato has other plans, though. He has come to the picnic wearing incredibly tight jeans that Koushiro guesses were not chosen for Jyou’s benefit. “I think I’m going do something with Chloe,” he says. 

“That Canadian girl?” Taichi asks.

“Yeah. She’s nice. She speaks French. And when I’m with her I don’t look like the only foreigner in town.”

“That’s stupid,” Taichi says. “There are so many tourists here. And you’re not even a foreigner.” 

“Good luck in the game,” Koushiro says.

“Oh, thanks,” Taichi says, and then looks at Yamato expectantly.

Yamato looks up from his phone. “Ganbatte, ne?” he says, before turning back to whatever it is that’s more important to him.

“Boy, am I lucky to have a cheerleader like you,” says Taichi.

“You bet your ass,” Yamato tells him, turning away and putting his phone to his ear.

Finally, Taichi gives up on him and looks at Koushiro. “Hey, you want to come watch the game? We can hang out after.”

Koushiro doesn’t mind being second choice. Of course he goes. There is nowhere he would rather be. 

The soccer pitch is bright and breezy and crossed by the shadows of passing clouds. He sits on the bleachers near the front, a spot just behind where the team’s coach is standng; he figures that’s a good enough indication of where to get the best view.

As the teams run out onto the pitch, Taichi’s unmistakeable with his thick hair and tanned skin, but he still lifts a hand to Koushiro anyway, to show that he knows he’s there. 

The captains shake hands, there’s a sharp blast of a whistle and then the thunder of cleats pounding across the turf. 

Koushiro’s not really one for playing sports himself, but it’s not like he has no interest in them at all. He follows soccer and baseball and can certainly appreciate the skill it takes to tackle and dribble and strike. 

It’s not long before he’s on his feet, shouting along with the scattering of other spectators. He feels the sting of every near miss; of every foul and dive from members of the opposing team.

The game is supposed to be a friendly and doesn’t count for anything, but there is nothing amicable about it when it goes to extra time and then penalties. 

Taichi’s a striker as well as captain, so he takes the shots for his team. Koushiro has seen him do this before: the moment of calm to gather himself, the look of intense concentration, and then the burst of movement as he shoots, square onto the goal. 

It is not for the faint-hearted. It’s not for the indecisive. Taichi is brilliant at it.

When the deciding shot makes it through the swoop of the goalkeepers arms and into the back right corner of the net, Taichi punches the air and does a few steps of a victory dance that wouldn’t look out of place in a music video – he’s got a surprising amount of natural rhythm – before the rest of the team catch up to him and launch themselves at him from behind.

Right in the middle of it all, with one of his teammates half-hanging off his back and another hugging him around the waist, Taichi looks up at the bleachers, catches Koushiro’s eye and beams right at him. See what I did, that look says. Share this. Be impressed.

And Koushiro is. He’s so impressed. But not just that. He’s breathless and warm and is feeling a rush of love flooding through his body as he claps and cheers that has nothing to do with game or the win. It just has to do with Taichi. 

Deep down, Koushiro realises, if he is really honest with himself, there is more to his interest in Taichi’s interactions with other men than just learning about a lifestyle. 

In the past, this has always been a hypothesis to be examined at another time, something to put off testing until he simply can’t wait any longer. 

Maybe now is the time.

That prospect is terrifying. But the longer Koushiro thinks about it, the more convinced he becomes. 

And the only thing he has to contend with is Yamato.


	2. Chapter 2

_April_

After that evening at Yamato’s apartment, Koushiro comes up with a plan. And it doesn’t take long before he gets the chance to put it into action.

He’s drinking orange juice at his kitchen table on Saturday morning when his phone buzzes with a message from Taichi.

It says: _Hey what are you doing right now?_

Koushiro looks at the laptop screen in front of him. All he’s doing is clicking from page to page, deep down the rabbit hole of the internet, after a quick search about the properties of Magnesium went off on a tangent.

_Not much, he sends back. Why?_

_I’m outside your building yo! Want to hang?_

Koushiro throws on a sweater, shoves his feet into his shoes and then heads down to find Taichi leaning over the handlebars of his bike on the street. 

“What’s up?” he says, with a grin. “Thought we could go to the arcade.”

They walk to the Joypolis, Taichi wheeling his bike. “Listen, I’m sorry about the other day,” he says. When Koushiro looks at him in confusion, he elaborates: “I mean, we had plans and I let Yamato crash them.”

“I suggested it,” Koushiro says, surprised that Taichi would bother to apologise.

“I know. But it wasn’t cool and I’m sorry anyway,” Taichi says with a shrug. “It’s nice to hang out on our own sometimes.”

Once they reach the Joypolis, he chains up his bike and they head straight for one of their favourite games: a zombie shoot-em-up that they’ve never managed to complete.

Today, Koushiro beats Taichi to selecting the brawny hero character that he usually plays. They never switch, but this is stage one of the plan. Koushiro knows Taichi sees him as a sidekick, rather than a true equal, and if he’s to have any chance at all here, he needs to change that dynamic. 

After all, superheroes never want to screw their sidekicks.

“I’m going to play Genzo,” Koushiro says. “That okay?”

Taichi looks at him. “Really? You want to lead the party?”

“Yes. I feel like it.”

Taichi blinks, momentarily thrown. “Uh…” He toggles his cursor back and forth over the remaining characters, skipping over the battle-scarred Banri – Koushiro’s regular choice – and instead selecting Saori, with her pistols and twin ponytails. “Sure.”

They play for a couple of rounds, both stumbling over the unfamiliar combinations of their new characters. At times, Koushiro can see Taichi just itching to take charge, to seize the controller from him and tap in the combos that he knows will save their party. But he doesn’t. He lets Koushiro try, and fail, and then do it better next time.

“Nice,” Taichi says, jabbing at the controller with his thumb, when Koushiro gets in a couple of particularly good shots.

“Thanks. Saori’s got some good moves too.”

“Right? Who knew? I’m going to play her more often.”

It’s fun. So much better than sitting in the Saizeriya. But it’s not long before they’re nearly out of money and Taichi’s stomach has started to rumble, so they call time on the game and head outside in search of food.

They grab a couple of Mos burgers and sit eating them, talking through their strategies for tackling the next level of the game.

“I think Genzo has to have full power when we go into that first battle,” Taichi says, wiping mustard from his bottom lip with the heel of his hand. “We need to get some big attacks in right at the start.”

Koushiro steels himself and then, casual as he can, says: “He’s kind of hot, don’t you think?”

It makes him cringe inside, but this is stage two of the plan. As well as ceasing to be a sidekick, he also needs to demonstrate his potential to be more than just an asexual figure. 

Koushiro is a sixteen-year-old boy with all the usual drives and impulses, but putting those out there where everyone can see has never felt natural to him. He’s not like Yamato, who can turn it on like a switch to sell music. 

Taichi pauses with a handful of fries halfway to his mouth. “Who, Genzo?”

“Yeah. I think he’s hot. Don’t you?” 

Koushiro’s palms are sweating. This is the closest he’s come to actually coming out to someone. Taichi licks his lips, wipes at another smear of mustard. Kourshiro can tell that he’s processing.

“I don’t know, man,” he says eventually. “Never really thought about it.” He shoves the fries into his mouth and chews, pulling a face to show that he’s thinking about it now.

“I mean, Saori’s okay too,” Koushiro says, trying to keep his cool.

Taichi swallows. “Do you know what? No. I don’t think he’s hot. He’s not really my type. He’s too big. I don’t like that rough look.” 

“Oh,” Koushiro says. He realises that he is tearing an empty paper packet of salt into smaller and smaller pieces and makes an effort to still the motion. “What do you like, then?”

Taichi inhales through his nose and looks away, and Koushiro wonders if he’s picturing blondes with long legs.

“I don’t know. I guess I’d go for something more understated,” he says, which is kind of a cryptic answer, but Koushiro just nods and goes back to eating his burger.

They carry their trays to the disposal station and Taichi holds his hand out for Koushiro’s, offering to empty them both.

“Hey,” he says, as he dumps the trays on the pile beside the trash can. “I had no idea.”

“What?”

“That you…” Taichi shrugs. “I just had no idea, dude. You could have told me.”

Koushiro pretends not to know what he’s talking about. He’s going to let Taichi sit with this knowledge on his own for a while.

“What do you want to do now?” he says, and then, because he’s not a sidekick anymore: “Let’s walk along the bay.”

They collect Taichi’s bike from the bike park outside the Joypolis and wheel it along beside the water. The sun is out and gleaming off the Rainbow Bridge. The air rushing in from the bay smells like sea salt and adventure.

“I have to start looking at colleges,” Taichi says, kicking a stone through the railings that mark off the walkway from the bay.

Taichi has just started his final year of high school, along with Sora and Yamato. It won’t be long now before they are finally free to get on with the rest of their lives – like Jyou, who’s already attending medical school down in Kyoto. Koushiro can’t wait to join them; he’s been eagerly researching colleges since he was thirteen.

“You’re not doing that already?” 

Taichi screws his face up. “Nah. It’s not really at the top of my list. I don’t even know that I want to go to college.”

It’s a reminder of just how different they really are. Koushiro puts his hands in his pockets and looks up at the sky, follows the path of a passing black-headed gull.

“Yamato’s looking at colleges abroad,” Taichi says abruptly. “Europe, mostly.”

“London?” Koushiro asks, thinking of Yamato’s penchant for Britpop and Union Jacks.

“Maybe. Or Paris. Because his French is better than his English. But I don’t think he’s really that into to the idea of college either. He’s just into the idea of leaving.”

“And you’re not?”

“I don’t see why there’s such a rush to leave Tokyo. It’s home.”

Taichi’s staring straight ahead as he talks, not looking at Koushiro. They don’t usually speak so openly and it feels more comfortable this way. Perhaps that’s why neither of them recognises the familiar faces outside the coffee shop until they have almost passed by.

“Taichi? Koushiro?” It’s a girl’s voice, calling to them from the parasol-shaded tables that edge onto the walkway. Taichi presses the brakes on his bike and they both look over to where Mimi is waving to them.

She is at a table with Yamato and a couple of the guys from his band – Koji, who is tall and brooding, and Kentaro, who has the bland good looks of a Hollywood movie star. Koushiro’s heard on the school grapevine that Mimi and Kentaro have just started dating, but he hasn’t actually seen them together until now.

Taichi wheels his bike over to them and leans it against a planter full of tulips.

Mimi hugs him first and then Koushiro. She’s wearing a cotton summer dress – too cold for the weather – and has a man’s denim jacket over the top of it, probably Kentaro’s. A pair of brand new Doc Martin’s are on her feet, way too grungy for the Mimi that Koushiro knows. She still smells the same, though, of the sweet perfume she always wears: roses mixed with camomile.

“How are you guys?” she asks. “What have you been up to?”

“We’re good. Just been at the Joypolis,” Taichi says. He exchanges nods of greeting with Kentaro and Koji and then looks at Yamato. “What are you all doing here?” 

“Band stuff. Trying to sort some shit out for that show we’re doing in Osaka next month.” Yamato uses his foot to shove the empty chair beside him out, offering it up to Taichi. “You want to sit down?” 

Mimi clasps her hands together, beaming. “They have the best chai tea lattes here. You should really stay and try one.”

To Koushiro’s surprise, Taichi turns to him. “Do you want to stay?”

The shock of being asked makes Koushiro want to say no, just to see how that would go down. But he can’t pass up such a perfect opportunity to get started with the third and final stage of his plan.

The sunlight is catching Yamato’s eyes and turning them piercing blue. He lifts one hand to shade them as he’s waiting for an answer.

Logically, Koushiro knows that Yamato is not his competition; he has a reputation as a ladies’ man and has never shown any sign of being interested in Taichi like that. 

Yet as long as he still commands the bulk of Taichi’s attention, they will be rivals by default. And until Koushiro can find a way to eclipse him, he’s not going to get anywhere with Taichi. 

This is the ideal time to test out his chances.

“Yes, let’s stay,” he says, which makes Mimi squeak with delight and grab him by the arm.

“You have to order inside. Come on, I’ll explain the menu to you guys.”

She hustles them both into the air-conditioned coffee shop and starts rattling through the milk choices and different flavours of syrup. 

By the time they step out again, he and Taichi have both been coaxed into purchasing huge, whipped-cream-covered drinks. 

“Did you get caramel?” Koushiro asks, giving his drink a suspicious sniff.

“I don’t even know what I got,” Taichi says.

“I think you have mine.” Koushiro hands the caramel drink over to Taichi and takes back the chai that is rightfully his.

They follow Mimi back to the table, where she hurries up behind Kentaro and leans over to kiss him on the cheek before sliding into the seat next to him. Taichi drags another chair over from a neighbouring table for Koushiro and then takes the empty seat next to Yamato himself.

“What did I miss?” Mimi asks.

“We’re looking at the fliers,” Kentaro tells her. “Tomo put together some designs. I’m just showing them to these guys.” He taps the screen of the iPad on the table in front of him and pushes it towards Koji and Yamato.

“What do you think?”

“Wow, that’s pretty eye-heavy,” Yamato says, glancing up from the screen. “I mean, that’s just me and my freak eyes, right out there.”

Kentaro shrugs. “I thought it made it intense.”

Taichi pulls the iPad closer so that he and Koushiro can look too. It’s an extreme close-up, just Yamato, a slice taken from the middle of his face: eyes and cheekbones, not much else. The band’s name and the details of the gig are printed below.

Taichi uses his thumb and forefinger to zoom into one eye and then out again. “I like your freak eyes,” he tells Yamato. “They’re your best feature.”

“Thanks,” Yamato says. “They do kind of freak people out, though.”

“People are idiots. Who cares?”

Yamato takes the iPad and passes it back to Kentaro. “I think we should do a different one.” 

“Seriously?” Koji says.

Yamato looks at him. “I don’t want it to be all about me.”

“I thought you wanted everything to be all about you, all the time?”

“That’s not true.”

“Well, I think it’s hot,” Mimi says, looking up from peering at the iPad in Kentaro’s hands. “Let’s be honest here, I’m your target audience. And I say that it’s sexy and mysterious and, bottom line: it’s going to make teenage girls buy tickets. That’s what you want, right?”

“Exactly.” Koji folds his arms, looking smug.

“I say you put it to a vote,” Mimi continues. “All in favour of using this version?”

She raises her hand, quickly followed by Koji and Kentaro. Taichi puts his hand up too, shrugging when Yamato glares at him. “It’s a good picture,” he says.

“Outnumbered, Yamato. That’s decided.” Mimi taps one lavender-painted fingernail against the screen of the iPad. “Now, what’s next?”

Kentaro stares at her with awe. “Hey, do you want to be our new manager?”

“You couldn’t afford me,” Mimi says with a smile, and then leans over to kiss him on the lips.

There is an awkward pause as everyone around the table realises that their kiss isn’t going to be ending any time soon.

“This again,” Koji mutters.

Yamato sighs. “Do you want to do the mixes?”

Koji nods. He reaches to a backpack under the table and comes up with a laptop and headphones. He holds an earpiece against one ear and starts clicking on things.

Taichi looks like he is about to say something to Yamato, so to get his attention Koushiro touches him on the arm and regurgitates the first fact that comes to his mind: “Do you know that an image of an eye is seen as a protective symbol in many cultures against curses bestowed by an evil gaze?”

“Oh yeah?” Taichi says, with interest, because he always seems interested in Koushiro’s facts.

“Yes. Although many of those same cultures also believe that people with blue eyes are particularly skilled at bestowing the curses in the first place.”

“Huh. Sounds about right.” Taichi glances at Yamato, who is accepting the headphones from Koji and settling them over his own ears. He looks back at Koushiro. “Where do you get all this stuff, anyway?”

Koushiro shrugs. “I read a lot.” He thinks for a moment and then takes his phone out of his pocket. “And I have this new AR app. You’ll like it. Look at this.”

Mimi’s giggling from the other side of the table and Yamato and Koji are bickering over the sound on the laptop. Taichi sucks hard on the straw of his frappucino, his slurping drowning out the other noises. He scoots his chair closer and leans over, to peer at the phone that Koushiro is holding up to the bay. It puts their faces close, and his breath ghosts over Koushiro’s cheek.

The view of the Rainbow Bridge is reflected back at them through the phone’s camera, the image covered with tiny eye-shaped symbols. Koushiro taps one of the symbols with his thumb and, at his touch, a window pops up, showing vital stats for the bridge: height, width, density of the metal. 

He taps again and the window is replaced with a trivia fact, in this case something that Koushiro knows already: The lamps that illuminate the Rainbow Bridge are powered by solar energy, gathered during the day.

“Neat, isn’t it?” he says. “It uses GPS to determine where you are and what you’re looking at, based on which direction you’re facing. Then it shows information that might be of interest.” 

“Cool. It’s like the future,” Taichi says, his fingers brushing Koushiro’s as he takes the phone from him. “What happens if you point it at a person?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.” Koushiro blinks as Taichi points the camera straight at him. “What does it say?”

“It’s telling me that there are twenty-two bones in the human skull,” Taichi says. “Knows you’re human, anyway.”

“Huh. Must use some kind of basic facial recognition...”

“And now it’s saying that the brain makes up roughly two per cent of your total body weight.” Taichi peers around the phone to look at Koushiro in person. “Yours probably weighs more than that seeing as you’re such a genius.”

“What are you guys doing?” Yamato says. He’s looking over, holding one earpiece up off his ear. 

“Hey,” Koji snaps, “Are you listening, or not?” 

Yamato glares back. “Yes, I’m listening.” He jerks the headphone back into place. ”Play the other one.”

Kentato, who has finally detached himself from Mimi long enough for her to slip off to talk to some girls she knows at another table, leans over to look at the laptop screen. 

“Are you listening to the version with the different bridge?”

“No. That’s scrapped.” Koji nods towards Yamato. “Duchess here didn’t like it. And it was shit, anyway.”

“That bridge was Tomo’s baby,” Kentaro says, referring to their only absent band member.

“Well, I’ve killed it.”

Yamato removes his headphones. “I like the thick sound of the bass in that version. The reverberation works well.”

Kojis shakes his head. “I knew you’d say that.”

“Why? What’s the problem with it?” Yamato is immediately on the defence. Apparently, it’s not just Taichi he saves that tone for.

“I think it drowns you out.”

“We can push the vocals up, though,” Kentaro suggests. “Change the layering.”

“I like the lighter one,” Koji says.

Yamato puts the headphones down, frustrated. “It’s not enough like that. It doesn’t have the punch.”

“Guys,” says Kentaro.

“Maybe you should give it the fucking punch yourself, then,” Koji says. “We shouldn’t just be relying on the guitars.”

“What, I’m not singing it well enough?”

“No, but if you want to be a frontman, be a frontman, okay? And stay the fuck out of my mixing.”

Maybe it is hearing Yamato’s all-too-familiar tone, or maybe it’s the fact that they have absolutely no reason to be here, but Taichi turns suddenly to Koushiro and says: “Do you want to go?”

“Maybe.”

“Yama,” he says, cutting right through the argument. “Koushiro and I are going to split.”

Yamato pauses to look at him in surprise. “Really? You don’t have to. I’m nearly done here.”

“That’s for fucking sure,” Koji says.

“Oh bite me,” Yamato snaps, in a burst of aggression sharp enough to silence him.

“Yeah. We’re going. I’ll see you, alright?” Taichi says and Yamato looks up at him again.

“Okay. Call me. Or whatever.”

“I will.”

They wave to Mimi, toss their empty cups in the trash and then Taichi picks up his bike and wheels it clear of the tables. 

Somehow, weirdly, it feels like a victory. 

As they are walking away, Koushiro looks back and catches Yamato’s eye. He is watching them go with a frown on his face, but he turns away as soon as he sees Koushiro looking.

Now you know what it feels like, Koushiro thinks to himself. Now you know what it feels like to not be the centre of his world.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am updating this with a hangover, so...take that into account, m'kay?

_May_

Over the next few weeks, Koushiro and Taichi start hanging out on their own together more and more. 

When _Moonlight_ gets its Japanese release, they go to watch it subbed at the movie theatre, three days after it opens. They don’t invite anyone else because nobody else would care about watching some gay American film. Taichi buys the biggest tub of popcorn available and wedges it into the gap between their seats. When they both reach for it at the same time, their hands brush, the touch greasy with butter and salt.

When Taichi’s parents go away one weekend, Koushiro stays over at his place on the Saturday night. Hikari is sleeping over at Miyako’s, so they have the apartment to themselves. They order pizza and sit on the concrete balcony, which is still warm from a day of unseasonably hot weather, trying to teach themselves Casino-style blackjack. They have a theoretical plan to learn to count cards and then fly to Macau and win big at the tables, enough to buy themselves penthouses and Ferraris.

Koushiro glances up from the fan of cards in his hand and sees Taichi grin at him in the orange light of the setting sun and wonders if he has ever been quite this happy before.

He begins to wonder what the next stage of the plan should be. How to move whatever is building between them from hypothesis to fact. 

But, before he can get there, something happens to set it all back. 

*

Mimi’s seventeenth birthday is in the third week of May, and she throws a huge party at her parent’s huge apartment. 

Half of Koushiro’s grade is invited, along with all of the chosen, and Yamato’s band. There will be booze and karaoke and probably lots of drama that Koushiro has no interest to be involved in. He wouldn’t go at all – only it’s Mimi, and Taichi calls the day before and suggests they go together, says that he’ll bring beers for the both of them, which gets Koushiro out of having to find a way to get his own.

So, Koushiro puts on what he thinks is his most acceptable outfit, promises his mother that he’ll be back before midnight and catches the bus down to Mimi’s street, where Taichi is waiting for him at the bus stop, holding a convenience store bag full of beer.

“This party is going to be dumb as,” Taichi says, which is anything but reassuring.

They take the elevator up and find Koji and Yamato smoking on the open-air walkway that leads to Mimi’s apartment. Koji flicks his cigarette away immediately and heads back inside, while Yamato stays where he is.

“Is it kicking off already?” Taichi asks, and Yamato shakes his head.

“It’s the opposite. Hardly anyone’s here. Kentaro came early to help Mimi out. Dragged us along.”

“Lucky me and Koushiro are here to get the party started, then,” Taichi says, with a wink. He starts to head for the front door, but Yamato stops him, with a palm to his chest. Koushiro stares at his hand. Touching Taichi that easily is something he has yet to completely master himself. 

“Hey,” Yamato says, hesitantly. “Are we cool? Have I done something?”

Taichi blinks at him. “What do you mean?”

“You haven’t messaged me in, like, a week. We haven’t hung out in at least two. Figured you were pissed about something.”

Taichi’s eyes flick back and forth, reading things in Yamato’s face that Koushiro can’t see there.

“You haven’t done anything. I guess I’ve just been busy,” Taichi says, and Yamato’s hand falls away from his chest. “We can hang out now,” he adds, with a grin. He claps Yamato on the arm as he heads inside, but Yamato’s not looking at him anymore, he’s looking past him, to where Koushiro is lingering behind.

“Good evening, Yamato-san,” Koushiro says, sudden awkwardness making him extra polite.

“Hi,” Yamato says, tight and a little wary.

He knows, Koushiro thinks suddenly. He knows what I’m trying to do. But this is of course ridiculous. 

So, Koushiro smiles and tries to appear unthreatening, which isn’t particularly hard. “Shall we go inside?” he says, and then waits for Yamato to nod and lead the way to the door.

*

The party is as awful as Koushiro had been anticipating. It is loud and full of people who won’t give him the time of day at school, let alone now. Taichi is in his element, though, despite what he said earlier. He quickly gets lost in the blur of social interaction. 

Koushiro drinks one beer, but everyone else seems to be drinking ten times as much and he feels out of place and bored. Sora has mixed huge jugs of whiskey tea (“I read a recipe online,” she says. “But it’s basically just cold tea and whiskey.”) and he stands with her in the kitchen while she stirs each one with a long pair of cooking chopsticks and then dips a glass in to taste.

“God, that’s horrible,” she says, pulling a face. 

Koushiro gestures to the nearly empty whiskey bottle on the kitchen counter. “Maybe you put too much in.” 

“Maybe.” Sora looks around. “I’m not going to drink this. Have you seen Yamato? He’s good for whiskey.” 

Yamato is talking to some girl from Mimi’s grade, but he abandons her in an instant when Sora leans across the breakfast bar and shouts his name over the music. They haven’t dated since junior high, but they’re still close. 

“You want this? It’s way too strong,” Sora says, pushing both jugs across the bar. Yamato sets the beer he’s holding down, picks up one jug and sniffs it, recoiling at the strength of the fumes.

“Why is there a chopstick in it?” he asks.

“You try finding a cocktail stirrer that long,” she says. “Just pass it around. I don’t want it to go to waste. And don’t give it to Tai.”

As the whiskey tea makes its way around the party, things get even louder. 

Jyou turns up, fresh from the shinkansen. He stands in the doorway, blinking behind his glasses until Mimi spots him and screams so loud that Koushiro nearly jumps out of his skin. 

But Jyou’s arrival makes her excited enough about having their group together again that she makes an effort to gather them in one place, moving smoothly through the party and plucking people from conversations with winsome smiles and flattery, until they are all in one corner, where they can catch up and nobody else cares to interrupt. 

This is the only place Koushiro feels comfortable, with all the people he knows and trusts. Taichi reappears and slings an arm around his shoulders, the neck of a beer bottle gripped in one hand. He’s a little drunk, Koushiro thinks. The weight of his arm seems heavier that normal, and his cheeks are flushed.

“To Mimi,” Sora says, raising her glass. “Happy birthday.”

The rest of them echo the toast, clinking bottles and glasses together. Hikari takes a cup of the whiskey tea out of Takeru’s hand and swaps it for the safer option of a beer.

The karaoke machine is just behind them and music videos are running unattended on the television screen. Mimi’s eyes light up, the only warning they get before she lunges for a microphone and then stares around at them eagerly. 

“Okay, who’s up?” To Koushiro’s relief, her gaze settles on Yamato. She points the microphone at him. “Come on, superstar. Are you going to show us what you’ve got?”

Yamato shakes his head. “I don’t think so. It’s my day job.”

Taichi lifts his arm from Koushiro’s shoulders and steps forwards to take the microphone.

“Sing with me, Yama.” He stoops to pick up a second mic from the floor, already a little unsteady on his feet. “We’ll sing something stupid in English. It won’t be like your day job at all.”

“Yes!” Mimi’s eyes are dancing as she helps him to flick through the list on the screen in delight

“Where’s the Rihanna?” Taichi asks her.

Yamato is watching with his arms folded. “You’re such an enormous gay stereotype sometimes, Tai. Seriously.”

Taichi stops flicking and looks over with raised eyebrows. “Okay, Christina Aguilera. Come on.”

“Oh hey, the leather chaps song. That’s perfect. Not gay at all,” Yamato says, sarcasm dripping.

“I like gay.”

“I know, babe.” 

“Don’t bullshit, man. We both know you know all the words. Here, give me some of that whiskey tea and we’ll get it on.” Taichi reaches for the cup Hikari confiscated from Takeru and she passes it to him, laughing.

“This is already a bad idea. I just want to say that,” she says, and Koushiro wants to agree.

“It’s a great idea,” Takeru says. He gives his brother a push forwards.

“Isn’t there some Blur or something?” Yamato asks.

“No, wait! ‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind’,” Taichi says. “We’re definitely doing this. Then I can rap. You can just back me. Take the second part.” He pushes a mic into Yamato’s hand.

“I’ve not had enough to drink for this,” Yamato says, but Mimi just pours neat whiskey into a cup from a bottle on the coffee table and passes it to him. “Thanks,” he says flatly.

“I’ll do it,” Koushiro says, stepping forwards, although he can think of nothing worse than singing in front of this roomful of people. 

To his surprise, Yamato looks right at him. “No,” he says. “I’ve got this.”

“Okay, okay, ‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind’. Get ready. You’re the blue words; the singing parts,” Taichi says, nudging Yamato with his elbow. He hits a button and the music starts.

Yamato downs the whiskey in one go and lifts his microphone. From the back of the room, one of his band members lets out a wolf-whistle, and he turns to give them the finger.

If it were anyone else, the performance would be a car crash. They’d never live it down. But Taichi takes nothing seriously, which means he can get away with just about anything. He raps with good humour, laughing through his fuck-ups, and pulls it off through sheer guts and force of charm alone. 

Singing the choruses, Yamato is a literal pro. His voice is clear and strong, and if he’s embarrassed by Taichi throwing shapes beside him, he doesn’t show it; he just covers it up with enough talent for the both of them instead. 

They make it to the end of the song, amidst scattered applause and whoops from the other guests. Taichi laughs into the mic and the sound is magnified, ringing around the room. This is what popularity looks like, Koushiro thinks.

Yamato is knocking back more whiskey and Taichi seems ecstatic. He slips an arm around Yamato’s waist to tug him closer and speak into his ear – not his shoulders, his waist – and Koushiro suddenly doesn’t want to be here anymore. 

He pushes through a balcony door and swallows lungfuls of fresh air. 

Through the windows he can hear laughter and what sounds like Mimi singing at the karaoke machine. Her song is ‘Baby’ by Justin Bieber. 

Koushiro folds his arms along the top of the balcony wall and stares at the chinks of purple, light-polluted sky in between the towers of apartment buildings. The scent of jasmine drifts up from the little garden in the courtyard below. The smell is comforting. It makes Koushiro feel grounded. 

The wind starts to pick up, but he stays where he is, shivering through it, trying to shake the image of Taichi with his arm around Yamato’s waist and his mouth against his ear.

What was he honestly thinking, planning in logical steps like he can control how people feel? He should know by now that his friends don’t operate like pieces of binary code. He might be able to change how Taichi sees him, but he can’t change who Yamato is, or how he looks, or Taichi’s feelings for him.

What he needs is a new kind of plan – although what that should look like, he has no idea.

*

Koushiro stays on the balcony for what feels like a very long time. It’s not until the music finally dies down that he opens the balcony door and heads back inside. 

The apartment is alarmingly empty. At first, he thinks that something terrible must have happened to clear everyone out so fast. But then he sees Sora and Jyou sitting together at the breakfast bar, talking over half-empty bottles of beer.

Sora looks up as he approaches. “Oh, hi,” she says. “I thought you left with the others.”

“Where did they go?”

“Neighbours complained.” Jyou pushes his glasses up his nose with one finger and then turns his head to stifle a yawn. “Mimi took everyone to some bar where they apparently never card.”

“Did Taichi go?”

“I don’t know,” Sora says. She looks around, as if Taichi might suddenly appear. “I guess so. He was pretty drunk. I thought he was looking for you. At least he was the last time I saw him.”

That’s funny, Koushiro wants to say, the last time I saw him it looked like he was trying to put his tongue in Yamato’s ear.

“Do you want a beer?” Jyou asks. “I mean, not these.” He gestures to the abandoned bottles on the breakfast bar. “These are unsanitary. They’re not ours. But I have some left in the fridge you could have.”

Koushiro shakes his head. “No. Thank you. I think I’m just going to go.”

He makes his way through the mess of plastic cups and forgotten jackets, past the television screen that is still playing music videos on mute, past the armchair where an unfamiliar couple are making out, and out through the front door — where he nearly trips over Taichi, who is sitting on the walkway just outside.

“Ow,” Taichi says, pulling his hand out from beneath Koushiro’s foot. 

“What are you doing?” Koushiro asks, once he’s regained his balance. 

“I’m just,” Taichi says, but then decides to leave that sentence there. 

He’s clearly wasted, not something that Koushiro has much experience dealing with. So, he turns and calls for Sora through the open apartment door.

She comes outside, takes one look at Taichi and groans.

“I told Yamato not to give him the tea,” she says. “He hasn’t been able to stomach whiskey since that class trip to Nara.”

“Should we get Jyou?” Koushiro asks.

“He doesn’t need a doctor. He just needs somewhere to sleep it off before his mom finds out.” 

Sora takes her phone out, flicks through her contacts and puts it to her ear. “Stay with him,” she tells Koushiro, and then walks off out of earshot as the call connects. Taichi mumbles something and Koushiro crouches down beside him to hear better.

“What did you say?”

“I’d really like to fuck him,” Taichi says, and Koushiro doesn’t need to ask who he’s talking about. “I think I might be in love with him.” 

“Okay. Shit. I’m really not the person for you to be having this conversation with.” Koushiro glances down the walkway to see what’s taking Sora so long.

“Why not?”

Koushiro takes a deep breath. “Because I like you, idiot,” he whispers.

Taichi doesn’t react to that. He stares blankly, not seeming to have heard. Then he says, “I’m going to puke.”

He doesn’t, though. He just draws one leg up to his chest and bows his head, resting his forehead against his knee. Koushiro stares at him for a moment, trying to get his own breathing under control. Then he hesitantly reaches out a hand and rubs Taichi on the back.

“It will be okay,” he says.

They stay there like that, Taichi with his head bent, Koushiro rubbing in what he hopes is a comforting way, until there are footsteps approaching from the elevators and Sora reappears, with Yamato at her side. Koushiro quickly withdraws his hand.

“Fucking hell. It’s like Nara all over again,” Yamato says, angry already.

“Tell me about it.” Sora leans over and pats Taichi on the shoulder. “Tai? Hey, stand up, will you?”

He lifts his head at the sound of her voice, but otherwise doesn’t move. “I’m fine,” he says.

“No, you’re a fucking mess.” Yamato crouches down. He seizes one of Taichi’s arms, pulls it over his shoulders and looks up at Koushiro. “Will you help me?” 

Koushiro takes hold of Taichi’s other arm and, together, he and Yamato lift him to his feet. 

“I’m fine, though,” Taichi says, although this is clearly not true. He’s dead weight in their hands. Yamato winces and shifts his body so that he can better support him. Koushiro can tell from the way that Taichi seems to grow lighter that Yamato’s taking most of the weight.

“Can you hail a cab, please? He’s not going to be able to walk all the way,” Yamato says to Sora.

She nods and jogs off to catch the elevator ahead of them, while Yamato and Koushiro slowly begin walking Taichi after her. They do this in silence. Their only accompaniment is Taichi humming along to the music inside his head. 

The elevator arrives and they manoevvre Taichi inside, Koushiro stretching one arm out to hit the button for the ground floor. “He seemed okay an hour ago,” he says, as they start to descend. 

Yamato stares up at the illuminated display above the elevator doors, watching the changing numbers. “It always happens all at once with him. He’ll go from normal to out of control in the space of, like, two minutes,” he says. “It’s a fucking pain in ass.”

Taichi gets very quiet as they ride down through the floors, and by the time they reach the ground, he has stopped humming completely. When the doors spring open, he lurches forwards suddenly, stumbling out of the elevator on his own.

“Shit,” Yamato says, rushing forwards to haul Taichi back upright. “Are you okay?” he asks, with the first note of genuine concern that Koushiro has heard from him so far.

Taichi nods. They stare at each other. “You’re a good friend,” Taichi says.

Yamato sighs, shakes his head slightly. “Okay.” 

And then, as Koushiro is stepping out of the elevator, Taichi leans forwards and kisses Yamato on the lips. 

Koushiro feels the jealousy as a punch to the gut, like something physical that has happened to him.

Yamato is still holding Taichi up, so he can’t exactly step away, but he also doesn’t react to the kiss. He just stands there until Taichi leans back again, and then looks at him with a level of calm that suggests this may not be the first time that something like this has happened.

“If I liked boys, you know it would be you,” he says, voice quiet, half-joking. 

Taichi smiles at that, looking almost sober for a second. “And that’s what kills me,” he says.

The roar of a car engine interrupts the moment, as the taxi pulls up to the curb. Its headlights sweep over Sora, who has been standing by the road, trying to flag one down. She must have seen the whole thing too. 

The jolt of adrenaline from nearly falling, or maybe from the kiss, is enough to get Taichi walking properly again. He doesn’t need two people to support him anymore, so Koushiro trails behind as they walk towards Sora and the taxi.

“Act sober for the driver,” Yamato whispers and Taichi draws himself up a little taller, opens his eyes a little wider.

Sora opens the door of the cab, and Koushiro helps Taichi in, while Yamato walks out into the road to climb into the other side. Before Koushiro can shut the door, Taichi leans out and reaches to grasp his hand. 

“Thanks,” Taichi says, staring up at him. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t.”

“Thanks,” Taichi says again. He squeezes Koushiro’s hand once, and then lets go, dropping his head back against the headrest of the car seat. 

Koushiro slams the door and he and Sora watch as the taxi pulls away.

*

The next morning, Koushiro wakes up with a headache, despite having only had one beer to drink. 

He checks his phone. There are no messages from Taichi, but there’s one from Sora, saying that, according to Yamato, Taichi had puked up the worst of it as soon as they got to his place and then fallen asleep immediately after that. There’s also a message from Mimi, thanking him for coming to her party and hoping that he had as much fun as she did.

His emails aren’t much more exciting. There are notifications from his social accounts, junk mail from online stores and only one that is even worth clicking on. It’s from Fumiko, a girl in his grade who reports for the school paper. She is one of Mimi’s friends, and knows everything and everyone. Although she rarely stoops to acknowledge Koushiro in person, she is always feeding him good stories by email. He vaguely remembers her being at the party last night, thinks perhaps they exchanged smiles across the room.

The title of the email is “uber hot gossip”. When Koushiro opens it, he sees that the message has a picture attachment.

 _Would have been better if the other party was Yagami Taichi, but still pretty fucking great,_ Fumiko has written in the body of the email. _I know the guy involved. Think he’d talk. If you want me to get a quote and write up the story, just say the word. Fx_

Koushiro frowns at the mention of Taichi’s name, and clicks on the attachment.

The picture that loads was clearly taken at the party. Koushiro recognises the little courtyard at the back of Mimi’s apartment building, with it’s wrought iron benches and creeping jasmine bushes. It is the same courtyard he was looking down on from the balcony.

There are two people in the picture, pressed close, faces tilted as they kiss. One of the people is Yamato. The other is someone tall, with dark hair. 

It’s Koji, Koushiro realises, with a shock. Koji from Yamato’s band.


	4. Chapter 4

Koushiro stares at the picture for a long time, trying to work out what to do.

The priority, he decides, is to stall. 

Fumiko is a notorious gossip. The only reason that everyone in the school does not already know about this must be because she is sitting on the story, waiting for the go-ahead to write about it.

He opens up a window and quickly types a reply to her email:

_Wow, that’s definitely hot gossip! It is too late to make this week’s edition... But I would really like to run it. Do you think you can hold onto it for next week without anyone else finding out?_

_Koushiro_

Once this message is sent, he drums his fingers against the side of his laptop, thinking hard. The person he really wants to speak to about this is Taichi. But he can’t share the message with him. It’s not his place to. And if Fumiko knows, then it’s only a matter of time before the word gets back to Taichi anyway. Koushiro might be able to hold her off until the next edition, which goes to bed on Wednesday, but if he ultimately says that the story won’t run, she’ll stop keeping it secret pretty damn quickly. 

No, Taichi doesn’t need the warning right now. But there is somebody else who does.

Koushiro opens another email window, and has to search through the depths of his contacts list for the right address when autocomplete comes up with nothing for Yamato’s name. It must be years since they have emailed one another.

He drags and drops the picture attachment from Fumiko’s email and then types out his own message.

_One of my contacts from the school paper sent this to me today. I thought you should know. Maybe you should tell Taichi before he hears about it from someone else?_

_Tell me if I can help in any way._

_Koushiro._

He clicks ‘send’. And then he waits. 

Within ten minutes, Fumiko has replied. Her message is short and sweet: _Mission accepted. Fxx_

Yamato does not reply at all.

Sunday passes. Koushiro’s aunt and uncle come to visit, which means they all have to sit around the dinner table as a family. There is ice cream for dessert, and his six-year-old cousin knocks an entire glass of juice all over the floor. 

Koushiro’s father spends the afternoon in front of the baseball on TV, and that evening his mother opens a bottle of red wine and spreads out her gardening magazines, staring at window-box designs while Koushiro does his homework, sitting on the balcony.

This whole time, Yamato still does not reply. Koushiro thinks about texting him, but feels strangely nervous about doing so, as though it might be overstepping some invisible boundary. 

In the end, he just has to go to bed, and hopes that something will present itself at school to show him what needs to happen next.

*

He is eating his lunch at one of the metal picnic tables behind the computer block when Taichi throws his bag onto the opposite bench and sits down in front of him.

“Hey,” he says, unzipping his bag and taking out a bento box that has certainly seen better days.

Koushiro doesn’t ask how Taichi knew where to find him or that he would be eating lunch so late, right before the period ends. He just watches Taichi lift the lid off his lunchbox and start shovelling rice and vegetables into his mouth. 

“How do you feel?” Koushiro asks, and Taichi pauses momentarily to look at him.

“What do you mean? Are you going to eat that onigiri?” Taichi gestures with his chopsticks to the leftover rice patty. Koushiro pushes it towards him.

“After Saturday night. You seemed pretty, ah…”

“Oh, shit!” Taichi manages to spit a couple of grains of rice out as he says this, but he at least has the decency to cover his mouth with his hand and finish chewing before he continues. “I completely forgot. I haven’t seen you since. Yeah that was bad. I threw up _everywhere_.”

The sense of pride with which he says this is something completely alien to Koushiro. As far as he’s concerned, vomiting is never something to be proud of.

“All over Yamato’s apartment?” 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Taichi says with a grin. “No, it was all in the bathroom. In the toilet. And a tiny bit in the sink.”

Koushiro’s expression must show how appalled he is, because Taichi laughs at him.

“Dude, don’t look so horrified. It’s cool. That apartment knows no shame. It’s just lucky Yama was around to take care of me.”

I was the one who took care of you, Koushiro wants to say. I sat with you on the floor while Yamato was off making out with some other guy. Yamato thinks you’re a pain in the fucking ass. He told me so.

“That is lucky,” is what Koushiro actually says.

Taichi takes a bottle of water out of his bag and downs almost the whole thing in one go. He wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist when he’s done. “That was a fun party, though, right?”

“I don’t know,” Koushiro says, wondering if Taichi can really remember any of it. “I guess so.”

Lunch is nearly over, so he starts to pack his stuff away, but pauses when Taichi makes a noise of protest. 

“Oh, sorry, do you want this?” Koushiro holds what is left of his meal out. It’s not much: a rolled slice of omelette and a few green beans. Taichi eats it all anyway and then hands the empty box back.

“Listen, so Sora and I were going to catch a movie tonight,” he says. “Do you want to come?”

“Which movie?”

“I don’t remember. Some indie thing? We bought tickets already. Yamato was supposed to be coming, but now he has to rehearse with Koji or something.”

 _Or something_ , Koushiro thinks.

“So we have an extra ticket. You want it?” Taichi stands up and swings his bag up onto his shoulder. The top two buttons of his shirt are undone and his tie is loose. He looks rumpled, but in a nice way, like that’s exactly how he planned it. Koushiro wonders if he remembers the kiss, what Yamato said to him afterwards. He lied right to Taichi’s face.

They start walking back towards the main school building just as the bell rings. Koushiro usually hates to be late, but he makes an effort not to rush, because Taichi is not rushing.

“I wish I could remember what it’s called,” Taichi says.” It’s like, the name of a vegetable, maybe? Or a fruit. Or was it something to do with an animal? Anyway. It’s supposed to be good.”

“I’ll come,” Koushiro says.

“I know I have it here somewhere.” Taichi has his phone out and is scrolling through messages from Sora, looking for the name of the movie.

“It doesn’t matter,” Koushiro says. “It can be a surprise.”

Taichi looks up at him and smiles. “Cool. Surprise movie date,” he says, and Koushiro tries not to read anything into that phrasing. “Meet me…” Taichi glances around, realises they’re standing right by the doors to the main building. “I guess, meet me right here?”

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll catch you later, then.” 

They are both walking backwards now, inching their way towards separate home rooms. “I’ll buy the popcorn,” Taichi adds, with a wink and a grin, before turning and heading off down the corridor.

*

The movie is called _Ladybird_. So not a fruit, vegetable, or even an animal, technically.

“I knew it was something,” Taichi says, when Koushiro points this out to him.

“Every movie is called something,” Sora says, as they step into the line for the snack counter. “Don’t feel too proud of yourself.”

“Hey, we can’t all be geniuses. Like some people.” Taichi reaches out to ruffle Koushiro’s hair, but he ducks out of the way just in time, crashing into a rack of candy bags and nearly overturning a whole shelf of Pocky. Taichi laughs and catches his elbow to steady him.

“Don’t make me act like a mom,” Sora says, turning to scowl at them. But then her eyes widen and Koushiro has to look round, to check what she has seen.

Yamato has just walked through the movie theatre doors and is heading their way. His blonde hair is unmistakable in the crowd of Japanese faces.

Sora steps forwards to give him a hug. “We thought you couldn’t come.”

“I moved stuff around. Sorry I’m late.” Yamato nods a greeting to Taichi, but when he spots Koushiro, his face changes. “What are you doing here?”

“Taichi invited me,” Koushiro says, feeling defensive, more on Taichi’s behalf than his own. 

“I told him he could have your ticket. Sorry, man,” Taichi says. But Yamato is still staring at Koushiro, his eyes narrowed, like he thinks that he has no right to be here. 

That’s when Koushiro realises why Yamato never replied to his email: it’s because he is spectacularly pissed off about it.

He’s not used to being on the receiving end of Yamato’s over-dramatics, and his instincts tell him to play it cool, but for some reason he doesn’t. He can’t help himself. Maybe it’s the power of knowing such a potentially devastating secret. Maybe he’s just truly fed up of being on the sidelines.

“What about you?” Koushiro asks him. “Why are you here? We thought you’d be with Koji.”

It’s a shock and not a shock when Yamato lunges for him. Koushiro brings up his hands to defend himself, but Taichi is already there, putting his body in the way and throwing his arms around Yamato, holding him back before he can get anywhere near.

“Woah!” Taichi says and then grunts as Yamato jerks against his hold, trying to shrug him off. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Yamato isn’t listening. “Fuck you, you vindictive little nerd,” he spits out over Taichi’s shoulder and Koushiro feels the rage boil up inside of him.

Taichi lets Yamato go and shoves him back a step, placing himself quite firmly between the two of them. He holds up his hands, half placating, half getting ready to block again.

“Yama, chill the fuck. What did he ever do to you?” 

“Everything,” Yamato snaps. He shoves a hand through his hair, pushing it back into shape. “Forget this,” he says. “Fucking forget it.”

Taichi and Sora exchange glances, wordless agreement passing between them.

“Yamato, wait,” Sora says, chasing after him as he storms away.

As the rest of the world comes back into focus, Koushiro notices that people around them are staring. A couple of movie theatre employees are hovering nervously, wondering if they need to get involved. 

Taichi grabs him by the arm and tugs him out of the line. “Dude. What the hell was that about? What’s going on?”

Koushiro thinks about lying, about telling Taichi that he has no idea, that it was all just some misunderstanding. But he’s mad, and sick of hiding what he really thinks.

“Sometimes, I really don’t like him,” Koushiro says. Taichi looks surprised. But it can’t honestly be that much of a shock. If it is, then Taichi doesn’t really know him that well. And he apparently doesn’t know Yamato as well as he thinks he does, either. 

“Come on, man. You know what he’s like.”

“He doesn’t appreciate you,” Koushiro says. Taichi pauses at that.

“Okay. This is weird now.”

“I just get tired of seeing it. It’s exhausting.”

“Hey, for you and me both.”

Koushiro glances around to check there’s nobody here that they know, and then lowers his voice anyway. “Do you not remember telling me? At the party. How much you want to…” Taichi looks blank, so Koushiro mouths the words ‘fuck him’.

“I told you that at Mimi’s party?”

“Yes.”

Koushiro knew he didn’t remember. But to Taichi’s credit, he isn’t thrown for long. He rubs a hand over his hair, the only sign that he’s uncomfortable with the conversation.

“Well, I’m not going to stand here now and say that isn’t true. Is it a problem if I do?”

“I don’t know,” Koushiro says, honestly. 

Taichi is staring at him. This is it, he realises. Now or never. If you’re going to tell him, it has to be now.

But he can’t get the words out. And the silence stretches so long that Taichi sighs and turns away. 

“Maybe we should skip the movie,” he says. 

They say goodbye right there in the forecourt and head off in different directions. The streets outside the theatre are crowded, packed with couples and groups of friends. Koushiro weaves between them, feeling completely alone. 

He has never faced a problem that has made so little sense before. This whole situation is empty of patterns he can spot and safe conclusions he can draw. Somehow, he seems to be getting it wrong every step of the way. 

If he can only find a way to take himself out of this whole mess and look down on it from above, he might have a better chance of figuring it all out.

Instead of walking straight home, Koushiro heads for the steps leading down to the bay’s little beach. Staring at the water might clear his mind, help him to think rationally again, he reasons.

But he is not alone in this idea. 

When he reaches the sand, he sees Sora and Yamato standing a few yards in front of him, deep in conversation. They are ignoring the way that the wind catches their hair and the hems of their clothes. Sora is holding her shoes in one hand. A cigarette is burning, forgotten, between Yamato’s fingers.

Koushiro thinks about turning around and walking right back the way he came. But there is nothing to be gained from that except prolonging the inevitable, so he steels himself and starts walking towards them, his feet sinking into the sand in his school shoes.

They don’t notice him approaching right away. As he gets closer, he can make out their conversation. 

“I mean, Koji? Seriously? I want to start lecturing you about self-respect right now,” Sora is saying, frowning at Yamato in an ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed’ kind of way.

“Well, don’t,” Yamato says.

“He treats you like crap.”

“It’s not like that isn’t mutual.”

“Right. And that’s what makes it safe. Am I getting warm?” Sora folds her arms, her shoes thumping against her side. “Neither of you cares, so there’s no danger of getting hurt.”

Yamato scowls at her. “Can’t I sleep with someone just for fun?”

“No, actually. You can’t. Because it’s never fun for you. You always feel bad about yourself afterwards and then come crying to me.”

“I don’t cry about it,” Yamato says. 

The tip of ash that has been building at the end of his cigarette falls and drops into the sand. The movement seems to remind him that the cigarette is there, because he lifts it to his lips, looking towards the sea. 

Sora watches him. “You’re better than this,” she says.

Yamato exhales downwind of her. Koushiro can smell the smoke as it is carried away on the breeze. “I’m not. And I don’t want to be.”

“I don’t buy your bullshit for a second,” Sora says. “Just so you know that. I’m not buying it.”

“And I’m not having this conversation with you again.”

Yamato turns around. He is about to walk away from her, but stops when he sees Koushiro. He doesn’t look mad now, just wary, and one piece of the jumbled-up puzzle slots suddenly into place: Yamato is afraid, lashing out because he feels cornered.

Koushiro steps forwards, cursing the way the sand makes him stumble. “I never intended that message as a threat,” he says, hoping he has hit the nail on the head. 

Yamato stares at him; Koushiro can see him turning it all over in his mind, weighing natural distrust up against the need to believe an old friend. 

“It sure as hell sounded like one.” 

“It wasn’t meant to be. It was supposed to be a warning.”

Naturally, friendship is what wins out, as Koushiro hoped it would. Yamato nods, some of the tension easing out of his face. 

Sora takes a few steps forwards, her bare toes leaving imprints in the sand. But Koushiro isn’t finished with what he has to say.

“Taichi has real feelings for you” he tells Yamato. “He asked me not to tell anyone.”

Yamato laughs at that, just the smallest, breathiest chuckle. It’s a laugh of disbelief, Koushiro thinks. But then Yamato says, “I don’t know why. Everyone already knows.” 

His cigarette has burned down, so he drops the end of it, but immediately produces a packet and sets about lighting another. Sora frowns in disapproval, watching as he turns his body to shield the lighter’s flame from the wind. 

Koushiro doesn’t know what to say. He thought he was making progress, but now he has been thrown two steps back in making sense of all this. He can’t comprehend how Yamato could have known exactly how Taichi feels about him and still not be honest. “I don’t understand,” he says.

“What, you think Taichi’s going to keep that shit to himself?” Yamato says. “Mr Courage? No way. He’s got to be all gung ho about it. He hardly keeps it a secret. I’m not an idiot. I know when someone’s coming onto me.” 

“But you don’t like him back.” Perhaps Koushiro is stating the obvious, but he needs this spelled out for him.

Yamato is silent for a moment. A thin line of smoke trails from the end of his cigarette. Sora steps forwards and touches him on the arm. He looks down at her hand.

“I’m not sure what I feel. Okay?”

That takes a second to sink in. And when it does, Koushiro says something he hardly ever says: “Fuck.”

“Fuck is right,” Yamato agrees.

Now the puzzle pieces are all clicking into place, but Koushiro doesn’t like the picture they are making. 

“What about Koji?” he asks.

“I couldn’t risk Tai if I wasn’t sure,” Yamato says. “I needed to try it with someone who didn’t matter.”

“Fuck,” Koushiro says again, more forcefully this time. Suddenly, they really are in direct competition for Taichi’s affections. And he can predict exactly who’s going to win. 

Not only that, but Yamato knows it, too. Koushiro can see it in his eyes: he knows he has the power to take everything from him. He’s just trying to decide whether or not to actually do it.

Realisation seems to be dawning on Sora, too. She is looking back and forth between them, reading the situation as it unravels around them.

“Listen. I’m sorry,” Yamato says, though he doesn’t really sound it.

Koushiro steps forwards, takes the cigarette from Yamato’s hand and tosses it into the sand. “You’re supposed to have quit,” he says, as he turns to walk away.

“Koushiro,” Sora says after him, but she doesn’t try to follow him. And he does not look back.

*

The smell of curry sauce is overwhelming as Koushiro unlocks his front door and steps into the porch. Usually, his mom’s curry is one of his favourite things to eat, but right now, the smell just turns his stomach.

As he steps out of his shoes, his phone pings in his pocket. When he takes it out, there is a message alert showing on the lock screen.

_Story’s out. Everyone knows. It’s already doing the rounds. Sorry! Guess I wasn’t the only one who saw… Fxx_

“Masami? Is that you?” Koushiro’s mother calls from the kitchen. He realises that he is still standing there in the porch wearing his jacket.

“No, it’s me,” he shouts back, as he slips his phone away and shrugs the jacket off. 

His mother looks up as he comes into the kitchen. She’s standing by the stove in her pink slippers, with her hair piled up on her head. The wooden spoon in her hand drips curry sauce back into the pan. 

“Back already? That was a short movie,” she says, and then, reading his mood, she puts her head on one side to consider him more carefully. “Hey, what’s up? Do I need to call someone’s mom?”

Koushiro shakes his head. “I just need some curry.” 

“Well, then you are in luck, sir. It will be ten minutes.”

Whether it’s monsters trying to take over the city or someone about to break his heart, his mother’s kitchen will always be a safe place. Koushiro takes a seat at the table. He starts to get his phone out, but then thinks better of it. Thumbing the switch to silence it, he leaves it tucked away in his pocket.

His father arrives just as Koushiro is helping his mother to dish up the food. They all sit down to eat together, something that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.

Because his phone is on silent, Koushiro misses the first call that comes through from Taichi. And he only catches the second because he has the phone already in his hand, about to put it on to charge in his room.

“Hey,” Taichi says into his ear, the second he answers, “Do you want to come to a gay bar with me?”

Koushiro stares out of his window at the purple-pink sky of early evening. “Now?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Because it’s a Monday.”

Taichi laughs at him. “Don’t worry. We’ll be home before we turn into pumpkins.”

“That’s not how the story goes.”

“I’m picking you up. There’s a dress code, so don’t wear sneakers,” Taichi says, before disconnecting the call. 

*

Twenty minutes later Taichi turns up at his door looking different. He’s wearing black, for a start, and his pants are tighter than normal, showing off the toned muscles of his thighs. He looks great, but kind of...off. There’s a tweaked-out look in his eyes, the look of the junkies who cluster in the bay at night.

Koushiro steps outside and pulls the door closed behind him quickly. It’s taken long enough for him to convince his mom to let him back out again tonight, without her seeing Taichi looking like some kind of crackhead.

“Did you take something?” Koushiro asks, as they start towards the elevator.

“Like what?”

“Like drugs.” 

“What? No! Come on. Who do you think I am?” Taichi says. “I might be a lot of things, but hooked up with badass drug connections is not one of them. I just want to check this place out.”

The elevator doors slide open and they step inside. It smells like takeout food, from whoever was in here before them. Koushiro looks sideways at Taichi, who is staring straight ahead. Something still feels weird.

“Is this…” he starts, without stopping to think if it is a good idea to bring up Fumiko’s message. But Taichi has already turned to look at him, so he has to continue. “I mean. Did you hear something today? About Yamato?” 

Taichi gives him a tight smile. “Yeah. But don’t worry. It’s not like it’s true.”

“You don’t think it’s true?”

“About him and Koji? No way. He would have told me if it was. One hundred percent.”

Taichi sounds so confident that Koushiro is momentarily at a loss for words. 

As the doors open on the ground floor, and they step into the weak evening light, Taichi turns to him and takes out his phone. “Okay, cards on the table time.” He hands over the phone, showing Koushiro a message thread. The name of the sender is unfamiliar, but Koushiro puts context clues in the messages together and guesses that it is someone from the soccer team, who has passed the rumour onto Taichi.

The last message in the thread reads: _Dude if you don’t believe me, go to Sleek tonight in Shimokita. See for yourself_

Koushiro looks up at Taichi and sees a determination in his eyes that he knows all too well. Once it has set in, there can be no deterring him. He will trample over anyone and anything to achieve whatever it is he needs to achieve.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Taichi says.

Since he was ten years old, Koushiro has always had Taichi’s back and he is not about to desert him now, no matter how it makes him feel. He nods and hands back the phone. 

As they board the Rinkai line and take their seats amongst the half-drunk salarymen and young couples dressed for dinner, Koushiro is struck by a feeling of impending doom. No good can come from this journey. At best, Yamato will not be there; Taichi’s misplaced faith in him will endure, and Koushiro will have to spend an awkward evening alone with him in a gay bar. At worst, Yamato and Taichi will have the fight to end all fights and one of them will finally kill the other. 

Of course, this is an extreme scenario; highly unlikely. But Koushiro’s not about to rule anything out. 

The train speeds then northwest, away from the bay and towards the hipster bars of Shimokitazawa. It is a long way, further than they would ever normally go on a weeknight, but presumably that is the point. It is somewhere that is safe from the prying eyes of familiar faces.

When they reach the bar, there is no indication of what the place really is, just the word ‘Sleek’ written above the door in illuminated blue Latin script, and a charm dangling in the doorway, in the rainbow colours of the pride flag. 

Koushiro is nervous about getting carded, and kind of hopes they will get turned away before they get in, but there is no bouncer on the door. Nothing to stop them. 

Inside, it is busy and dark, and only gets busier and darker the longer they stay. Dance music is playing. Koushiro is struck by how normal all the men here look. Some are in suits and ties, straight from the office. Others are more casual, like any guys you would see on the street. They are anyone and everyone – and, for once, Koushiro doesn’t feel completely out of place. 

Taichi leans close as two men with beards walk past, their arms slung low around each other’s waists. “You ever been anywhere like this before?” 

“Is that a joke?” Koushiro says.

“Yeah. Me neither.”

They watch another couple pass by and join a group of friends, who all toast their arrival, pushing glasses of sake together.

“It’s nice,” Koushiro says. 

“Pretty cool, right? Come on. Let’s get amongst it.” Taichi reaches down, takes Koushiro by the hand, and leads him deeper into the mix, smiling at guys who look their way, already nodding his head in time to the music.

An older man offers to buy them beers. Taichi accepts for both of them, but insists that they pay their own way. They drink the beers fast and then find some space at the corner of the dancefloor, where Taichi starts trying to teach Koushiro some kind of dance move. 

“You have to really pop your muscles,” he says, demonstrating again. “Yama couldn’t do it at first either, but he got it in the end.”

Speaking of Yamato, there seems to be no sign of him here. And as one track follows another, Koushiro forgets about him completely. 

He drinks another beer, which Taichi convinces someone else with an ID to order, and realises that he is actually having a good time. He’s not much of a dancer, but Taichi is. Just being near him on the dancefloor, without the fear of what anyone else from school will think is something special.

“I’m going to try to score another drink,” Taichi says, raising his voice over the music.

Koushiro nods and takes the opportunity to step back a little, to wait for Taichi away from the dancefloor and its crush of bodies. The music only seems to be getting faster and louder as the night goes on. As he pushes his way out of the melee, the blur of experience begins to separate back out into distinct sights and sounds. He can see individual people again. Behind him, somebody laughs.

The laugh is familiar, but not familiar. Koushiro can’t place it. But it’s quickly followed by a voice that he certainly knows.

“They're probably going home to play some Moby and fuck.”

There's something about the way Yamato says the word ‘fuck’. It really does mean sex, coming from his lips. Like he knows that word inside out and can make you know it too, if you’ll let him. 

Koushiro turns and confirms that yes, he’s there, blonde hair shining under the UV. He’s dressed head to toe in black, like he and Taichi planned to match tonight. But Yamato is wearing a necklace that flashes silver in the disco lights and there are rings on the slender fingers he has wrapped around a short glass that looks like it is filled with nothing but a couple of ice cubes. Even in this crowd of attractive and fashionable young men, he stands out as something special. 

Koushiro tries to work out which unfortunate guys are being bitched about, but before he can track the eyeline, Yamato twists to face Koji, who is standing beside him. “No, forget I said that. I don’t want to think about them fucking.”

Koji takes the glass out of Yamato’s hand and downs whatever is in it himself, ice and all.

“Hey,” Yamato says, but Koji just lets the empty glass go, dropping it onto the floor like it’s trash for somebody else to pick up.

“There’s definitely better people to imagine fucking,” he says.

“Subtle as,” Yamato says, or at least Koushiro thinks he does. He’s half lip-reading now, because Koji has put one hand low on Yamato’s back and pulled him in closer. He says something that Koushiro can’t make out. Whatever it is, it works, because Yamato smiles at him and hooks his fingers through the loops of Koji’s belt. 

There’s definitely nothing subtle, or hard to read, about the way that they kiss. 

Koushiro turns, hoping he can slip away before they come up for air and recognise him, but of course he comes immediately face to face with Taichi, who has a bottle of beer in each hand and an expression on his face that says it is far too late for anything to fix this.

The bottles of beer go the same way as Yamato’s glass and clatter to the floor. The liquid inside spills around their feet. Koushiro makes a grab for Taichi’s arm, but he slips through his fingers, elbowing his way towards Yamato. 

It all happens way too fast, the way their worst fights always do. Taichi shoves Koji aside and then seizes Yamato and backs him up against the wall. He gets him by the throat, which is something Koushiro hasn’t seen before. They’ve never approached that level of threat. He and Koji both step forwards to intervene, but Yamato lifts a hand telling them to stop.

“Tai,” Yamato says. His voice comes out in a rasp, and within a second Taichi’s hand has slid from his neck to grip the front of his shirt instead.

“You’re a fucking liar,” Taichi snarls at him, shaking him slightly. 

“I know,” Yamato says, which makes Taichi’s fingers tighten in the fabric of his shirt.

“Not about this. Why would you lie about this?” Taichi is more angry than Koushiro has seen him in years. For once, Yamato does nothing to fight back. He just meets Taichi’s gaze head-on. That seems to be his only line of self-defence.

“I know,” he says again.

When Taichi lifts his fist, Yamato still makes no move to intercept, but Koushiro has seen it coming. He is there to catch Taichi gently by the wrist, stilling his arm before the punch can land.

Koji had slipped away, but now he appears again, with what looks like a member of the bar’s security at his back. 

Taichi is breathing hard, but Yamato doesn’t break eye contact with him, not until the grip on his shirt loosens and Taichi steps back from him.

“Are we okay here?” the maybe-security-guard says, looking back and forth between them.

“Yes. We’re leaving,” Taichi says.

Koushiro realises that he still has hold of his wrist. He lets go and then follows Taichi out, through the doors, into the night, away from the bar. Away from Yamato.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finished. This. Mother.
> 
> A huge thank you to everyone who reviewed along the way. You guys are the most awesome. <3
> 
> And...shit gets schmaltzy here. Soz about that.

Taichi strides some distance from the bar and then stops and looks down at the floor. When Koushiro catches up to him, he sees that someone must have smashed a headlight, because the road is covered with fragments of glass, which gleam on the black tarmac like stars. This is what Taichi is staring at.

“This sucks,” Taichi says. “We were having a good time in there. Right?”

“Yes,” Koushiro says. “At least, I was.”

“I was too.” Taichi looks up, frowning. The anger seems to have drained out of him. “Am I the world’s biggest idiot?”

Koushiro shakes his head immediately. “No.”

“Why do I trust him so much?”

“We all have to trust each other. That’s how it works.”

Taichi shakes his head. “I shouldn’t trust anyone except you.”

“That would give you a rather limited evidence base,” Koushiro says, which makes Taichi crack a smile.

“I really was having a good time with you,” he says. “You’re not such a bad dancer.”

The street around them is deserted and, other than the beam of one streetlight and the glow of the bar’s neon letters, it is dark too. That, combined with the two beers Koushiro has drunk makes it seems safe enough to try to replicate the dance move that Taichi was teaching him in the bar.

“Wait. I can do this,” he says, before jerking his chest, trying to get the popping motion right. He stops. “Nope, that wasn’t good.”

Taichi laughs at him. “You’re getting it.” He turns to look over his shoulder, back towards the bar, where its name stands out like a lonely beacon. “We should have come here just to dance. Not because he was going to be here.”

“Maybe next time we can,” Koushiro says. 

When Taichi looks at him next, there is a kind of vibration building in the air between them, a signal that something new is about to happen. It means that Koushiro knows Taichi is going to lean in and kiss him even before it happens, which is ridiculous, because this is real life and not some love story where things like romantic premonitions should apply.

The touch of Taichi’s lips is soft, so gentle at first that it is barely there. Koushiro closes his eyes and tries to get lost in the feel of it, but finds that he can’t. 

He knows too much now about who Taichi is. What he needs. Who he loves. He knows too many pieces of the puzzle.

 _Nice_ , he hears Taichi say in his memory, _Destiny_.

Koushiro doesn’t want to be the sidekick anymore, but that doesn’t mean he’ll settle for being the consolation prize. And he is most certainly not going to be revenge.

He lifts his hands and pushes Taichi carefully away from him, opening his eyes slowly as he does so. 

Taichi blinks back at him. “What’s wrong?”

Koushiro takes a deep breath. And then he puts his brain on pause and says everything that his gut is telling him to say. 

“Yamato doesn’t want Koji. He wants you. But he doesn’t know how to act on that,” he says, in a rush. “He’s paralysed by the thought of losing your friendship and so is sabotaging things instead. Protecting himself by hurting himself and, unfortunately, also hurting you in the process. It is classically self-destructive behaviour, but this is exactly the kind of thing he has always done, so nobody should be surprised by it, least of all you.”

Taichi opens his mouth to speak, but then closes it again before saying anything. So, Koushiro continues.

“None of that matters, though. The important part is: I think you are right to trust him. He’s going to come through for you in the end. You’ve just got to hold your nerve.”

Around them, the street is silent. There is nothing but the chirp of crickets and the very faint reverb of the bass coming from the bar. For a moment Taichi doesn’t speak. When he does, he says, “Why are you helping us?” which is a ridiculous thing for him to say.

“You shouldn’t have to ask that,” Koushiro tells him.

The weird vibration has gone from the air as Taichi steps forwards again. This time, he puts his arms around Koushiro and hugs him, holding so tight that it lifts him to his tiptoes. 

“Thank you,” he says, speaking against Koushiro’s neck. 

Koushiro closes his eyes, breathes in the scent, feels soothed by the strength of the arms holding him up. 

They are interrupted by the sound of Taichi’s phone ringing. He takes it out of his pocket and looks at the screen.

“He’s calling me.”

“Better get it, then,” Koushiro says.

Taichi stares at the phone in his hand for an agonisingly long time. It is about to cut to voicemail, Koushiro is sure of it. But, at the last second, Taichi accepts the call and puts the phone to his ear.

“What?” he says. And then he lowers his gaze and listens.

Koushiro can’t imagine what Yamato is saying to him. But that’s the point: there are things between these two that other people aren’t meant to understand.

“Stop,” Taichi says, eventually. “I’m still here. I didn’t go anywhere.” He turns around to face the bar, where Koushiro can make out Yamato standing beside the blue-lit door. “I can see you right now.”

Taichi disconnects the call and Yamato starts walking over to them. Koushiro wonders if he should leave, torn between wanting to give them some privacy and a need to stay and make sure it works out.

Yamato approaches slowly, looking paler and more agitated than usual. But Taichi is calm. He has that look of quiet focus that comes before taking a penalty shot. 

“I’m sorry,” are the first words out of Yamato’s mouth. “I don’t know how to deal with this.”

“You could have talked to me,” says Taichi.

“Koji and I don’t even like each other.”

“Experiment with me instead of him, then. That’s fucking obvious.”

The wind is catching Yamato’s hair and blowing strands of it across his face. He pushes it away in frustration. “I couldn’t lose you.”

“Hello? Are you brain-dead?” Taichi says. “It’s me. Where am I gonna go?”

“I would have fucked it all up somehow. I will still probably fuck this up.” 

“Why will you?”

“Because I fuck things up! That’s my whole MO, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Well you suck at it, because, in case _you_ haven’t noticed, I still love you.”

Yamato swallows. He doesn’t say it back, but his eyes change in a way that means he doesn’t have to.

“Even if you are mean and angry and violent and try to stab me in the face,” Taichi adds.

That surprises a laugh out of Yamato, a sound that’s half-relief, half-scorn: their relationship in a nutshell. He puts one hand on his hip. “Are you trying to woo me with Studio Ghibli references? Because that’s so fucking lame.”

“You‘re lame,” Taichi says.

“You have literally no game,” Yamato replies, but then falls silent as Taichi steps close to him and strokes the backs of his knuckles across Yamato’s throat, where the faintest pink mark has been left by his fingers.

“I’m really sorry about grabbing you like that. You should have knocked me out for it.”

“I would have.” Yamato lifts one shoulder in a dismissive half-shrug. “But I guess let’s not kick things off with domestic abuse right from the start. That’s not a good foundation.”

“Deal,” Taichi says. He moves his hand to cup Yamato’s cheek and Koushiro really shouldn’t still be watching.

His shoes crunch on the broken glass as he starts to go. The noise makes Yamato look up at him. For a moment their gazes lock over Taichi’s shoulder. Then Taichi pulls Yamato in closer.

When he kisses him this time, Yamato kisses back.

Koushiro walks quickly to the station and boards the first train he sees, one that is just pulling into the platform. It’s pure luck that it is going in the right direction, because he doesn’t bother to check before getting on.

The carriage isn’t busy. He has a row of seats practically to himself and so can sit there in peace and quiet, staring at his own reflection, mirrored back to him from the dark beyond the windows.

It turns out this is a love story, he thinks, but not his own. Not just yet.

*

_June_

Summer comes early, hot and muggy from the start. 

The weather turns overnight. Koushiro wakes in sweaty sheets one morning with the sun beaming through the gap in his curtains, straight into his eyes. Outside, his hair frizzes and his shirt clings. 

It stays like this for weeks.

It’s still sweltering on the day of Yamato’s first gig once his band finally sign with their label. Koushiro is sitting under the shade of a tree, legs stretched out in from of him, with his laptop balanced on his knees. He’s trying to finish his math homework before the show and is just frowning over a particularly complicated problem when a duffel bag crash lands beside him.

“Hey,” Taichi says, as he throws himself down into the grass after his bag. He stretches out and folds his arms behind his head, looking up at Koushiro. He has already changed out of his school uniform and is wearing shorts and a t-shirt. “Man, this heat, huh?”

“It’s a weather front from Kyushu,” Koushiro says, quickly typing the solution to the current problem before Taichi makes him completely lose track of what he’s doing. “It’s not going to move on for at least another week, according to the JMA. I already checked.”

“I don’t mind it. Great ice cream weather,” Taichi says. And then, predictably: “You want to get an ice cream?”

Koushiro closes the lid of his laptop. “I thought we were going to Yamato’s show?”

“We can eat it on the way,” Taichi says. But he makes no move to get up, so Koushiro doesn’t either. He leans his head back against the trunk of the tree, staring up at the pattern of branches crossing the sky. They look so uniform, as though they have been programmed that way – which they have, in a sense. The branches are engineered, just as everything in life is: by genetics and physics and the Fibonacci code. 

Taichi is staring up at the branches, too. In one of his sporadic moments of deep introspection, he says, “Do you ever wonder if this world might not be real? The one that we’re in now, I mean?”

Koushiro thinks about that. He starts to go down the multiverse route and then circles back to theories about the illusion of consciousness via the fact that they already know there is at least one other world hovering beneath their own. He is about to start explaining some of this, but then Taichi yawns, and the sunlight twinkling through the leaves catches Koushiro’s eye.

“I hope it’s real,” he says, instead. “I like this world.”

“I like it too,” Taichi replies.

Eventually, they drag themselves to their feet and go get ice creams. They walk slowly to the venue, licking the sticky trails running from the cones and debating their latest strategy for tackling the big boss at the end of their game. These days, Koushiro always plays Genzo. He’s unlocked combinations with him that he could discuss for hours. Meanwhile, Taichi has really taken to Soari. Her ‘pistol whip’ attack is, he says, the greatest move in video game history.

They have passes to go backstage, so they head through the side door and walk into the hustle of pre-show. There are sound guys checking levels and people bent in discussion over clipboarded checklists. Koushiro can hear Mimi’s voice from somewhere down the hall, and over in one corner, he spots Koji standing with his new boyfriend – some guy called Haru – who predictably hates Yamato’s guts.

Yamato is already dressed for the stage when he comes out to meet them.

“Wow,” Taichi says, half-impressed, half-alarmed. “You look…”

“Thanks.” Yamato sounds slightly out of breath. He always looks so cool and collected once he’s on stage that Koushiro has never stopped to wonder if he gets nervous before his shows. But if the way he keeps clenching and unclenching his fists is anything to go by, stage fright is setting in.

“Can you get me a drink, please?” he asks Taichi. “I need to chill out.”

“Sure,” Taichi says. “What do you want? Like a tea or something?”

“Like a vodka.”

“Understood. Scoring drinks is my superpower.” Taichi winks at him and immediately jogs off, at his happiest with a mission to complete. It leaves Koushiro alone with a stressed-out Yamato. Not the perfect place to be. They haven’t had a one-on-one conversation since that day on the beach of Odaiba bay.

“I should go find Mimi,” Koushirs says, to give them both an easy way out.

But Yamato says, “She’s in Kentaro’s dressing room,” which stops Koushiro in his tracks.

“Oh.” He glances back towards the stage door. “Well, then I’ll go out front and wait for her there.”

“Hang on.” Yamato puts out his hand to him, stopping short of actually touching.

Koushiro pauses and looks at him, all dolled up for his show. Everything about him is tight and long and beautiful. His hair is gelled to perfection and his already large eyes are huge with eyeliner. They’ll be visible from the highest seats in the house. 

But all of this is an illusion, it’s not really him. And these are not the things that made Taichi fall in love with him anyway. Koushiro sees that now.

There is a small earpiece hanging from a wire over Yamato’s shoulder, waiting to be pushed into his ear. This is what Koushiro chooses to focus on instead.

“This all looks very professional,” he says, gesturing to the dangling earpiece.

“I know. Too professional. I’m kind of shitting myself, to be honest.” Yamato frowns down at the earpiece, then purses his lips and looks up at Koushiro again.

“I wanted to…” he starts, and then shakes his head. Tries again. “Tai told me what you did. What you said to him that night in Shimokita. And…thank you, I guess.”

This is unexpected. “You’re welcome,” Koushiro says, the words coming automatically.

Yamato shakes his head, looking dissatisfied, as though that simple exchange is not going to cut it. He starts to push a hand through his hair, but winces and stops when he remembers the gel. 

“No ‘I guess’. Just thank you. Really, thank you. You could have fucked things for me. But you did the opposite.”

As Yamato looks at him, a weight is lifting off Koushiro’s shoulders, one he didn’t know he was still carrying. He clears his throat and shifts his feet, not sure how to respond.

“Taichi told me you’ve quit smoking,” he says, hedging that a return to the normality of their friendship is the way forwards. “For real this time. That it was a condition of you guys dating or something?”

“Yeah. Cold turkey. It’s a killer.” Yamato smiles. “So, you know. There’s a downside to all of this. Maybe I shouldn’t thank you too much.”

Koushiro smiles back and then, on a whim, offers his hand. Yamato stares at it, bemused, but then accepts the gesture, clasping his hand around Koushiro‘s, so they can shake like gentlemen.

Their hands are still clasped when Taichi comes back, holding a disposable plastic cup and two open bottles of beer. He looks down at their hands. 

“Woah, am I walking into a business deal? Be honest with me. Is this some secret yakuza shit? Do we need to have a capital ‘C’ conversation?”

Yamato gives Koushiro’s fingers a squeeze — one last gesture of solidarity, felt just between the two of them — and then lets go. “Yep. I’ve just placed a hit on you. Can’t take it back now.”

“Well, shit, you don’t deserve this, then.” Taichi makes to turn away with the drinks, but Yamato lets out a whine of protest and catches him by the arm.

“No, don’t joke. I need that. It’s all I have without smoking.”

Taichi grins. He offers one of the bottles of beer to Koushiro and then passes the plastic cup to Yamato. “There was no ice. And I had to full-on steal it from the dispenser behind the bar. That’s a story for another time, but it was totally heroic.”

“Ugh, I love you,” Yamato says, before tossing back the warm vodka in one swallow.

From the way that Taichi goes completely still beside him, it’s obvious to Koushiro that this is not something that he hears a lot, or at all, even before Yamato licks his lips and says: “Shit. Is that the first time I’ve said that out loud?”

Before Taichi can answer, Tomohiro, the drummer from Yamato’s band, puts his head around the corner of the corridor that leads to the stage. He’s wearing the same kind of get up as Yamato. “Yo, Goldilocks. You need to come check your bass,” he says. “Sorry to interrupt love or whatever.”

Yamato nods and then turns back to Taichi.

“You’ll kill it,” Taichi says.

“I do, you know,” Yamato tells him.

“Yeah.”

They kiss briefly, clasp each other by the shoulders and then Yamato slips away, bound for the stage.

Taichi smiles after him in a way that might once have made Koushiro jealous, but now just makes him feel light and hopeful inside. “It’s nice to see that nothing’s changed, right? Now that we’re together.”

There’s a reason why nothing has changed, Koushiro thinks. It is because they already always were together. The only difference now is that they say it out loud. 

Koushiro holds out his bottle of beer. “Cheers to that,” he says.

* 

The concert runs late, so Koushiro is half-asleep the next day in school. It means he isn’t really looking where he is going as he’s rushing to the library to return the books from his history assignment. Some other kid is just coming out of the library door and Koushiro runs right into him.

The boy is tall and slim. He has a leather satchel over one shoulder and a pile of magazines in his arms, which he drops all over the floor as Koushiro collides with him.

“I’m so sorry,” Koushiro says, immediately bending down to help him gather them up.

“Don’t worry about it,” the boy says, although Koushiro has already collected most of them. 

As he passes the publications back, he realises that they are not magazines at all, but college brochures, for some of the best schools in the country. One name in particular catches his eye.

“You’re thinking about the Tokyo Institute of Technology? That’s really hard to get into,” Koushio says. He looks at this guy properly for the first time and is surprised to meet a pair of unusually smart grey eyes.

“It’s early, I know,” the boy says. “But I want to get a head start.”

“You’re not a senior?” Koushiro asks.

The boy stares at him for a moment and then says, slowly, “Um, no… I sit two rows behind you in homeroom.”

“You do? For how long?”

“I transferred here about a month ago. My name’s Koya.” 

This does sound familiar, now that Koushiro thinks about it, though he can’t actually remember seeing this guy before. He’s obviously been too distracted.

Koya smiles, showing a brilliant set of teeth. “I should have spoken to you earlier. I mean, I noticed you, you know? Should have the balls to come over and just say hi, right?”

Is this guy flirting with him? Koushiro isn’t sure. He has no idea what that would even look like. 

“I’m Koushiro,” he says, belatedly. 

“I know,” Koya says, still smiling tolerantly, because of course he already knows this. He has been sitting behind Koushiro for a month. “Guess I’ll see you in homeroom.” 

He hugs the college brochures to his chest and turns to walk off down the corridor. 

It only takes a beat for Koushiro to snap to his senses. Forgetting the overdue books in his bag, he hurries to catch up. 

“Hey,” he says, when Koya pauses and looks at him. “Do you like video games?”


End file.
